Since it began in early 2023, the global coral bleaching event has mushroomed into the biggest and most intense on record, with reefs across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans affected.
Reefs can rebound from the trauma but scientists told AFP the window for recovery was getting shorter as ocean temperatures remained higher for longer.
This latest episode was so severe and lasting that even more resilient coral was succumbing, said Melanie McField from the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People initiative, which specialises in the Caribbean.
Bleaching occurs when coral expels algae that provides not just their characteristic colour but food and nutrients, leaving them exposed to disease and possibly eventually death.
Scientists forecast that at 1.5C of warming, some 70 to 90 percent of the world's coral reefs could disappear -- a disastrous prospect for people and the planet.
Coral crisis
The latest coral bleaching event is the fourth and largest yet, and the second in a decade, exceeding the record area affected during the last episode of 2014-2017.
Oceans store 90 percent of the excess heat caused by humanity's burning of fossil fuels, causing warmer sea temperatures, which are the leading cause of coral bleaching.
To accurately accommodate the increased risk of mass coral death due to this event, NOAA was forced to add three new levels to a widely used bleaching alert scale.
'Mass mortalities'
“By February 2024, all of that died, and it was down to five percent living coral... We never saw that before, these mass mortalities,“ McField said.
Scientists predict the 1.5C threshold could be crossed early in the next decade.
If the current climate policies of all governments were implemented in full, the world could warm by up to 3.1C by 2100.
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