Last week, staff from NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW), an initiative now supported by the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center-administered Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS), published a commentary piece in Frontiers in Marine Science contesting an article that claimed mass coral bleaching has been occurring on the Great Barrier Reef for the last 400 years, rather than being a recent phenomenon.
In the article, “Commentary: Reconstructing Four Centuries of Temperature-Induced Coral Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef”, CRW staff demonstrated that the original paper was based on improper applications of well-known techniques and datasets, including NOAA CRW’s Degree Heating Week and Degree Heating Month data.
“The many serious flaws in [“Reconstructing Four Centuries of Temperature-Induced Coral Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef”] severely destroy its value as a contribution to understanding climate change impacts on coral reefs,” conclude the writers.
Among the authors are Drs. William Skirving and Scott Heron, subawardees to UMD/ESSIC under the current CICS cooperative agreement and NOAA CRW scientists. Dr. Skirving led the commentary alongside Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland, Australia.
To read the article, click here: “Commentary: Reconstructing Four Centuries of Temperature-Induced Coral Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef”.
