The Great Barrier Reef 'could be dead in 20 years'
The Great Barrier Reef could be dead in 20 years unless there is a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a marine biology expert said on Friday.
Rising sea temperatures were bleaching the coral and causing it to die, said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
At the same time, increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were turning the world's oceans more acidic and preventing corals from forming their limestone skeletons, he said.
Prof Hoegh-Guldberg and Professor Terry Hughes provided expert advice to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which released its latest report in Brussels on Friday.
The combination of rising temperatures and increasing acid levels could be deadly for the Great Barrier Reef, Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said.
"I'd say with 20 to 50 years under the current unrestricted emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere it is highly likely that it will be significantly changed to the point where we no longer have live corals," he said.
"They could be replaced by things like seaweed.
"It (the Great Barrier Reef) certainly won't be the place it is now, which is a place of incredible biodiversity."
The warning signs had been around since 1998 when a major bleaching event caused the death of 16 per cent of the world's coral.
Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said the reefs were like a "canary in a coal mine" for other vulnerable areas of the environment, such as glaciers and rainforests, which were also retreating due to global warming.
Around 60 per cent of Australia's bird species were in the wet tropics area of north Queensland.
"The predictions are that if we have a very sharp increase in temperature that is predicted, we will lose at least 50 per cent of that by the middle of the century."
Also of concern was the dramatic increases in the rate of coral diseases, some of which have increased five fold on the Great Barrier Reef in the past decade.
But action was needed now on climate change.
"If we don't cut back on emissions very dramatically, we are going to look at loss of things like the Great Barrier Reef and other coral ecosystems," Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said.
"If we take it seriously and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent in the next 30 years, we have chance of saving these ecosystems but this is the last time we have the option to choose."
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