5 major heatwaves in 30 years have turned the Great Barrier Reef into a bleached checkerboard
- Written by: Terry Hughes, Distinguished Professor, James Cook University
Just 2% of the Great Barrier Reef remains untouched by bleaching since 1998 and 80% of individual reefs have bleached severely once, twice or three times since 2016, our new study reveals today.
We measured the impacts of five marine heatwaves on the Great Barrier Reef over the past three decades: in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020. We found these...
