Journal
MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN
Volume 60, Issue 7, Pages 964-970Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2010.03.033
Keywords
1998 Climatic oscillation; Climate change; Climatic disturbance; Coral bleaching; Coral cover change; El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO); SST distributions; Temperature variation
Funding
- Bleaching Targeted Reef Research Group (BTRG) through the World Bank
- Global Environmental Facilities (GEF)
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Many of the world's coral reefs suffered high coral mortality during the 1998 ENSO, with the highest mortality in the western Indian Ocean (WIO). A meta-analysis of field data on change in coral cover across the 1998 ENSO event was conducted for 36 major reef areas in the WIO, and relationship of the change with the historical sea-surface temperature (SST) variability investigated. WIO reefs were categorized into three major SST groups of differing coral cover change. Cover change was negatively associated with standard deviation (SD) SST until about SD 2.3, with increasing flatness of the SST frequency distributions. It increased with further increase in SD as the SST distributions became strongly bimodal in the Arabian/Persian Gulf area. The study indicates that environmental resistance/tolerance to extreme anomalous events could be predicted and management priorities directed accordingly for a warmer and more variable future climate. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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