Product catalogue
Marine heatwaves in the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea, their mechanisms and impacts on shallow and mesophotic coral ecosystems
<div>The iconic Great Barrier Reef (GBR) World Heritage Area and adjacent Coral Sea Marine Park are under serious threat from global climate change. Given the increase in the frequency, intensity and severity of mass coral bleaching events associated with marine heatwaves (MHWs) in this region it is essential that we improve our understanding of the drivers and mechanisms underlying MHWs and the extent to which they impact both shallow and deeper coral reef ecosystems. This study used coarse-resolution and high-resolution sea surface temperature (SST) data to identify all major MHWs occurring in the GBR and Coral Sea region over the last three decades (1992-2022) and map significant MHW events over the past seven years (2015-2022), respectively. We then investigated the mechanisms of these MHWs in relation to both remote and local drivers through statistical and heat budget analyses. Finally, we identified potential coral reef refugia in this region using aerial-survey coral bleaching data and Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) images, and examined their underlying mechanisms using ocean model and <em>in-situ</em> oceanographic data. The results confirmed that MHWs in this region indeed increased in frequency, intensity and extent over the past three decades. El Niño, especially when it is in phase with positive Indian Ocean Dipole, was found to be the key remote driver leading to significant MHWs. However, the more recent strong MHWs also tend to occur without these climatic events, signifying the impacts of long-term climate change. We also found that reduced wind speed and shoaling mixed layer depth, often together with reduced cloudiness, which can occur with or without the influence of remote drivers, were the main local drivers pre-conditioning these MHWs. Anomalous air-sea heat flux into the ocean, which is mainly controlled by shortwave solar radiation (cloudiness) and latent heat flux (wind), was the most constant contributor to the 2015-16 and 2019-20 MHW events. However, local oceanographic dynamics, especially horizontal advection and turbulent mixing, played important roles in local MHW heat budgets. Importantly, this study confirms that shallow-water coral bleaching severity was indeed positively related to the cumulative MHW intensity in the 2015-16 and 2019-20 MHWs. We identified the shallow reefs in the northern GBR along the path of the North Queensland Current as potential coral reef refugia from bleaching because of the up to 2 oC thermal relief that the ocean current provides. We also found that, except during abnormal weather events such as tropical cyclones, the mesophotic reefs in the Coral Sea Marine Park may also act as potential coral reef refugia from bleaching because of the thermal protection provided by the shallow mixed layer depth.</div><div>
<b>Citation:</b> Zhi Huang, Ming Feng, Steven J. Dalton, Andrew G. Carroll, Marine heatwaves in the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea: their mechanisms and impacts on shallow and mesophotic coral ecosystems, <i>Science of The Total Environment</i>, Volume 908, 2024,
168063, ISSN 0048-9697, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168063.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2023-02-15T07:00:00
- Date (Publication)
- 2023-12-13T00:32:23
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/147717
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Author Huang, Z.
Internal Contact Author Feng, M.
External Contact Author Dalton, S.
External Contact Author Carroll, A.
Internal Contact Publisher Elsevier B.V.
External Contact
- Name
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Science of The Total Environment
- Issue identification
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Volume 908, 15 January 2024, 168063
- Purpose
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This article was written as part of post-survey analysis and publication works for the FK200802 survey (marine survey of the Seamount, Reefs and Canyons of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea Marine Parks). The FK200802 survey was led by Geoscience Australia with a number of external collaborator. The paper will advance our understanding of the impact of MHW and coral bleaching for the sustainable management of a high value ecosystem within Australia's marine jurisdiction.
- Status
- Completed
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Resource provider Place and Communities Division
External Contact Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Huang, Z.
Internal Contact
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
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- Geoscientific information
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- Keywords
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Marine Heatwaves
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- Keywords
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MHW
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- Keywords
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Great Barrier Reef (GBR)
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Coral Sea
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Coral Bleaching
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Mesophotic Reef
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Heat Budget Analysis
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Bran2020
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Himawari-8
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Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
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- Keywords
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Daily Optimally Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST)
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- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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Environmental Sciences
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Physical oceanography
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Climate change science not elsewhere classified
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
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CC-BY
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4.0
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details User Any
- Use constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
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© Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2023
Resource constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Classification system
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice facsimile
- OnLine resource
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Link to Journal
Link to Journal
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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<div>The paper is a result of the collaboration between Geoscience Australia and CSIRO. This study used many publicly available datasets. These included DOISST (NASA), Himawari-8 SST (JAXA), SSTAARS (Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)), BRAN2020 (CSIRO/National Computational Infrastructure in the Australian National University), eReefs (CSIRO), ERA5 (Copernicus Climate Change Service) and GBR coral bleaching data (James Cook University). The Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) data were collected during a Geoscience Australia led marine survey of the seamount, reefs and canyons of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea Marine Parks (survey FK200802) on board R/V Falkor of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. The AUV data was collected by IMOS AUV <em>Sirius</em> operated by the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (University of Sydney).</div>
Metadata constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
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urn:uuid/edce757e-262a-4d63-8dd6-2a6b2c66f089
- Title
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GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Huang, Z.
Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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Journal Article / Conference Paper
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/147717
- Date info (Creation)
- 2023-12-13T00:05:21
- Date info (Revision)
- 2023-12-13T00:05:21
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551