The letter, signed by 14 international and Australian marine and climate scientists – including IPCC authors – draws attention to the most severe bleaching event in recorded history currently unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef.

The scientists have rallied to make clear to the Prime Minister the severity of reef bleaching and have urged him to ensure Australia’s new, improved, national nature protection laws are passed before the end of this term of government.

To:  The Hon Anthony Albanese MP

       Prime Minister

CC: The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for the Environment and Water

Dear Prime Minister,

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger due to repeated severe bleaching events driven by climate pollution, with not enough time to recover in the gaps between events.

This is the worst heat stress event for the Great Barrier Reef on record, which is undergoing widespread and severe bleaching as a result. 

This is the fifth mass bleaching event in nine years. Previous mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef occurred in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2022. All were due to unprecedented heat stress caused by climate change. 

Since the last mass bleaching in 2022, at least five coal and gas projects have been approved by the Labor Government under Australia’s outdated national environment law: the EPBC Act.

Unfortunately, instead of the progress we were promised when the overhaul of this Act was announced, we now have no clear timeline of when this will occur. 

Australia’s new national nature protection laws must be delivered before the end of this term. And they must include a clear requirement to assess whether projects will cause more climate harm for nature as part of the assessment process. Given the damage climate change does to nature, it would be reckless to do otherwise.

There is strong scientific, community and parliamentary support for the Albanese government to thoroughly embed climate change considerations into the new laws.

Australia is the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter. Climate change is global, so no matter where in the world Australia’s coal and gas exports are burnt, they damage nature here at home, which is precisely why our nature laws must consider potential climate impacts, including direct and downstream pollution.

Australians understand the Great Barrier Reef is irreplaceable and want to protect it so all generations can experience its wonder and beauty. 

We urge the government to heed the science, listen to the Australian community and commit to working with the Parliament to close the climate gap in our national nature laws.

Signed,

• Professor Ove Hoegh Goldberg, Professor of Marine Science at the University of Queensland
• Professor Gretta Pecl, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania
• Professor Lesley Hughes, Professor Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and former Pro Vice-Chancellor Macquarie University
• Professor Jodie Rummer, Professor of Marine Biology, James Cook University
• Professor Emeritus David Karoly, University of Melbourne, (Climate Scientist) 
• Dr Selina Ward, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of the Environment, University of Queensland
• Dr Stuart Kininmonth, Heron Island Research Station Manager, Associate Professor of Marine Studies, University of the South Pacific
• Dr Tero Mustonen, Lead Author for the 6th IPCC Assessment
• Dr Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Co-Chair, Working Group I, IPCC
• Dr Simon Bradshaw, Director of Research, the Climate Council
• Dr Ben Fitzpatrick Director, Oceanwise Australia; Adjunct Research Fellow, UWA Oceans Institute
• Dr Maya Srinivasan, Centre for Tropical Water & Aquatic System Research (TropWATER) James Cook University
• Dr Yolanda Waters, Research Fellow, University of Queensland and founder of Divers for Climate Action
• Dr Dean Miller, CEO Great Barrier Reef Legacy and Forever Reef Project

Header image Credit: Harriet Spark

The post Letter to the Federal Government to close the climate gap on our nature laws appeared first on Climate Council.

Late Thursday afternoon, just as the nation was switching off for the Easter break, the Government quietly released its latest update on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, confirming the devastating extent of yet another mass coral bleaching event. Over the long restful weekend, millions of Aussies down the east coast basked in bath-like sea temperatures, seemingly unaware of the devastation beneath the surface.

You’d be forgiven for missing it, but recent months have seen our east coast waters suffer what can best be described as an underwater equivalent of our 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. From the Torres Strait to the tip of Tasmania, almost nowhere has been spared – ravaged by marine heatwaves driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Watch the Climate Council’s latest video on coral reef bleaching below

Down south in the waters off Tasmania’s east coast, the level of heat stress has been so high that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ran out of colours for its maps. Under climate change, Tasmania’s giant kelp forests –  once so dense they were marked on shipping maps – have declined by 95 per cent since the 1970s. A little further north, New South Wales oyster farmers were heavily impacted as temperatures in our estuaries resembled a hot tub. Offshore, New South Wales waters simmered at levels normally seen off tropical Queensland, where they would be warm enough to support the formation of a tropical cyclone. Further east, pristine Lord Howe Island – the Galapagos of Australia, home to the world’s southernmost coral reef – saw corals subjected to extreme heat stress and a major bleaching event.

Returning to the Great Barrier Reef, while it may be weeks or months before we know the full extent of this year’s damage, there are reasons to be very concerned indeed. Widespread bleaching has been observed along almost the entire length of the Reef. Most regions saw peak levels of accumulated heat stress that exceeded those experienced during 2016, when the Reef suffered its most widespread and deadly bleaching event. This includes coral reefs in the Torres Strait, on which Indigenous communities have depended and have cared for over countless generations. Regions that had been largely spared by previous events, such as Heron Island and other parts of the Reef’s southern section, have suffered devastating losses. Even long-lived ‘bommie’ corals, less sensitive than the fast-growing branching corals, have been bleached and are starting to die. These can be up to 200 years old – the equivalent of old-growth trees on land.

You would think that such an event would prompt a national outcry. Instead, stories appear about the next terrible climate impact on our oceans and we all move on. You are as likely to read about it on the BBC or CNN as in our own media.

Perhaps after five mass bleaching events in nine summers we have become numb to these events. Perhaps we have come to accept them as normal. In truth, there is nothing normal about what we are seeing unfold. Widespread coral bleaching was unheard of until the 1980s. It was only in 1998 that the Great Barrier Reef suffered its first reef-wide mass bleaching event. They are now occurring with such devastating frequency (5 out the last 9 years) that the Reef is getting almost no reprieve, and is fading to a shadow of its former glory.

Perhaps some fear that the tens of thousands of jobs and billions in tourism revenue riding on the health of the Reef will take a hit if we speak frankly about the changes we are seeing. 

Perhaps it is too inconvenient a truth for our Federal Government, which has dragged its heels on a desperately needed overhaul of our national environment law so that it assesses climate pollution risks. An astonishing 740 fossil fuel projects have been waved through since our Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act came into effect, every one another sucker punch to our embattled Reef. This includes at least five since the last mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2022 and the election of the current Federal Government.

All life, including our own, depends upon a healthy ocean. We are watching in real time as that life support system unravels. The rapid changes to our Great Barrier Reef and other irreplaceable marine ecosystems are a harbinger of even more dangerous times ahead, when more of our critical ecosystems are pushed beyond a tipping point.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

When it comes to getting climate pollution down fast and building a vibrant future beyond fossil fuels, Australia’s untapped opportunities are the envy of the world. New research from the Climate Council lays out how, using proven technologies that are available today, we can cut climate pollution by 75 percent this decade. This transformation is underway and delivering many additional benefits including helping families reduce their cost of living and creating new jobs in our regions. Now it’s time to step things up. By accelerating the transformation of our energy system we can slash climate pollution at home while laying the ground for new clean industries that will replace our fossil fuel exports.

If you’ve read an article about our Great Barrier Reef these last weeks, it may have been about one of the many efforts to regrow corals and restore pockets of the Reef. As noble as these efforts are, they are at best a band aid on a broken leg. This year we have watched as years of restoration efforts have been wiped out in a stroke by rising ocean temperatures.

The only way to protect the Great Barrier Reef and all our precious marine ecosystems is to leave our fossil fuels in the ground and end climate pollution as quickly as we can. 

Fortunately for that, we have the solutions.

The post Why is no-one talking about the black summer of our oceans? appeared first on Climate Council.

The coral bleaching event that is currently unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef is a lot to process. Officially declared a mass bleaching event by the Marine Park Authority in early March, it is the 5th event since 2016 and will likely have flow-on effects for the months to come. In some parts of the Reef, above average water temperatures have been accumulating for over 11-weeks causing many coral species to pale, fluoresce and bleach – all signs of severe heat stress. Some areas are already showing signs of mortality. If it doesn’t cool down soon, many more will follow.

But this apocalyptic story you’ve heard before – the potential demise of the only living structure you can see from space.
The story you haven’t heard is ours.

Right now, thousands of divers, marine guides, and tourism operators are in the water every day witnessing first-hand what is happening. And what it’s like on the ground is far more complex than anything you’ll hear online.

For us, this bleaching event is not just a moment in the media, this is our lives. We’ve been anticipating it and watching it slowly develop for weeks. We’ve been having difficult conversations with visitors. This is not our first rodeo. Every time summer comes round, we all cross our fingers and pray that the water doesn’t stay too hot for too long. Sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we don’t. Different parts of the Reef are affected differently.

As the eyes and ears in the water, we can tell you exactly what is going on, where and when. Which means we can also tell you just how much wonder and beauty there is to save, an important piece of the puzzle that never makes headlines.

The bleaching event doesn’t just affect the reef, it affects the people and communities that depend on it. Which means how it’s talked about affects us too. The public response to coral bleaching is often, like our response to most climate impacts, reactive. When the news breaks it’s either used to paint a morbid picture of the Great Barrier Reef, or it’s doused in head-in-the-sand optimism that everything will be okay. But the reality is there is an incredibly beautiful, sad and complex story in between. The trick is learning how to tell it.

A few years ago, I left the tourism industry and have since been on an academic quest to figure out how to tell the story of the Great Barrier Reef in a way that makes a difference. I have surveyed and interviewed thousands of visitors, guides, tourism operators and people across Australia to understand the most effective messages to motivate widespread action on climate change.

I have learned that saying the Reef is “dying” makes those in tourism fear for their jobs and makes Australians feel like they are unable to help. I have learned that saying the Reef is resilient can undermine the urgency for action, and that there is confusion among the public about whether it is alive or not. What I have really learned is that there is no perfect message, but there are a few key ingredients –
magic, grief, and a collective call to action. People need to feel there is something worth saving and that together we can – a message we can vouch for.

Many tourism operators are already working hard to nurture their sites and the industry is making plans for decarbonisation. But it might mean little if governments and big industries don’t do more to transition away from fossil fuels and give our Reef the chance to recover. The Reef is literally giving us glowing warning signs – it’s time to put an end to this polluting path we are on. And we can all do more to help.
For the over 64,000 people who work on the Reef, the Reef is not just a source of income, it’s everything. It’s our playground, our community, our culture, and our home. We love the Reef, and each time it bleaches we feel it in our bones.

So yes, use this bleaching event as a reminder that the situation is urgent. Use it to fight for more ambitious climate policies. That means saying ‘no’ to new fossil fuel projects and ‘yes’ to higher emission reduction targets. But don’t forget about the people who live and breathe the Reef every day. We are part of the story too 

Yolanda Waters, Founder – Divers for Climate
Yolanda is a dive instructor turned marine social scientist at the University of Queensland and Founder of community-led initiative Divers for Climate. She has completed a PhD in climate change communication which explores the diverse connections between people and iconic places like the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and the extent to which the GBR and GBR tourism can help strengthen public engagement with climate change. Yolanda has surveyed and interviewed thousands of Australians, including tourism operators and visitors across the Great Barrier Reef, about their perceptions of climate threats and actions, discovering that the GBR is a powerful tool to motivate complex conversations around climate action. Divers for Climate and the Undertow Media are currently producing a film that captures stories across the Australian dive community who are currently witnessing the impacts of climate change firsthand, including the coral bleaching event currently unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef.

The post The story you’re not being told about the latest bleaching event appeared first on Climate Council.

We are up on a northern part of the Great Barrier Reef for the launch of Code Blue – the Climate Council’s first comprehensive report on climate change and our oceans.

Today was a stark reminder of just how much hangs in the balance – what we are losing, but what we still can and must fight to save. 

We saw healthy patches of reef, some of which have been lovingly tended by marine scientists and assisted in their recovery. But we also saw vast tracts that can only be described as coral boneyards – areas that have never recovered from successive marine heatwaves.

The truth is that our Great Barrier Reef, and indeed our ocean at large, is in very serious trouble. As we head into another El Niño summer, there are well-founded fears of another devastating mass bleaching event.

Read Code Blue: Our Oceans in crisis report

Photographer: Tahn Miller, with divers Jodie Rummer and Simon Bradshaw.

More than half a billion people worldwide depend on coral reefs for their food, livelihoods, and the protection of their coastlines. Tragically, the damage to tropical coral reefs is but one aspect of a much larger crisis affecting our oceans. A crisis brought on by climate change, driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

The vast majority – around 93% – of the extra heat we have trapped by burning fossil fuels has ended up in the ocean. It’s an astonishing amount of energy – equivalent to detonating five Hiroshima atomic bombs every second, or enough energy to boil Sydney Harbour every eight minutes. 

This has consequences. More frequent and severe heat waves are pushing coral reefs and other critical marine ecosystems to the brink. Ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate, driving up sea levels and displacing coastal communities. The ocean circulations and currents that distribute heat, rainfall and nutrients around the planet are slowing and may even be headed for collapse.

The potential impacts of these abrupt changes are truly profound. We are talking about the unravelling of our very life support system. 

All life depends on the water cycle that starts in the ocean. The ocean and the atmosphere form a coupled system that shapes the Earth’s climate, creating the stable conditions that have enabled advanced human societies to develop. Humans also need the ocean in other fundamental ways: every second breath we take comes from oxygen produced by the ocean. Even if we live thousands of miles inland, our weather is shaped by what is happening in our oceans.

The ocean’s enormous capacity to absorb heat may have masked the true extent of the damage. But today these changes are coming back to bite us. 2023 is almost certain to register as the Earth’s warmest year on record, and Australia faces yet another climate reckoning with a devastatingly early start to our fire season, and warnings of worse to come.

Put simply, the global dance between the ocean and the atmosphere underpins life as we know it.

The latest observations suggest we are perilously close to dangerous tipping points for our ocean that could trigger millennia of irreversible sea level rise and the collapse of the ocean circulations and marine ecosystems upon which we depend for our very survival.

We ignore these warnings at our peril. There is only one solution to our climate and ocean crises, and that is to leave our fossil fuels in the ground and get our emissions plummeting. Fast. Australia must aim to reduce its emissions by 75% below 2005 level by 2030, and reach net zero by 2035. And we must urgently update our outdated national environment law so that it takes account of the dangers of climate change and puts a halt to the reckless expansion of our fossil fuel industries.

In hospital emergency rooms, a code blue is called when a life-threatening event is underway. We are calling a code blue for our oceans today, because the crisis in our oceans threatens all life as we know it – including our own.

The post The crisis in our oceans threatens all life as we know it – including our own appeared first on Climate Council.

Climate change and marine heatwaves

Climate change has driven an increase in average sea surface temperatures, both globally and around Australia. The upper layers of the ocean have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat resulting from burning fossil fuels and other human activities. In the Australian region, the average sea surface temperature has risen by over 1C since 1900. As sea surface temperatures have risen, there has been an associated increase in the frequency, intensity and duration of marine heatwaves, as well as their spatial extent. One study found that the number of heatwave days has doubled since the 1980s (due to an increase in both duration and frequency). Globally 8 of the 10 most extreme marine heatwaves have occurred since 2010.

Download the graphic here

Impacts of marine heatwaves

A variety of impacts have been associated with marine heatwaves, including shifts in species ranges, local extinctions and economic impacts due to declines in aquaculture and important fishery species. One of the most profound impacts of marine heatwaves is on coral reefs. When corals become stressed (e.g. due to marine heatwaves), they lose tiny algae, called zooxanthellae, which live inside their tissues. These algae provide their host coral with food, and give them their characteristic bright colours. When the algae leave, the white skeletons of the corals are revealed, hence the term “bleaching”. Without the algae, the coral loses its major source of food and is more susceptible to disease.  If the thermal stress is mild or short-lived, the corals may survive, but if the stress is more severe or prolonged, the corals can die or partially die. Repeated, lower level bleaching events can also lead to loss of corals over time. 

In 2016 and 2017, the Great Barrier Reef experienced unprecedented, back-to-back mass bleaching events, caused by marine heatwaves. Climate change led to conditions that made the 2016 bleaching event a whopping 175 times more likely to occur. Again, in 2020, the Reef suffered from a mass bleaching event. Marine heatwaves are primarily responsible for the loss of over half of coral populations on the Great Barrier Reef over the past three decades. The global average interval between coral bleaching events has reduced by around half since 1980 and is now only 6 years; such a narrow window does not allow for the full recovery of coral reefs.

 Do say

• Climate change, driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas is warming our oceans. 
• Marine heatwaves are a worsening problem and have been linked to mass deaths of sea creatures, birds and corals. 
• Climate change is the biggest threat to the future of coral reefs, including the beloved Great Barrier Reef. 
• Climate change is making marine heatwaves hotter, longer and more frequent.  
• Repeated bleaching events are not sustainable as coral reefs take around a decade to fully recover.
• The burning of fossil fuels is putting the Great Barrier Reef and the 64,000 Australian jobs that depend on it, at risk. Queensland’s $28 billion tourism industry relies on a healthy Reef. 
• The best way to ensure the Reef’s future is by accelerating the global effort to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions this decade. 

Don’t show

• People “enjoying” the beach or pool. This trivialises the impact of marine heatwaves.

Do show

• Before and after coral bleaching images
• Humans impacted by marine heatwaves – e.g. from fishing communities, tourism, conservation organisations.

The post Marine Heatwaves Communication Guide appeared first on Climate Council.

The Federal Government has spent a lot of money on reef management strategies ranging from water quality improvements to heat resistant corals—but it has done embarrassingly little to actually reduce emissions.

Unlike most of its international trading partners and allies, the Federal Government is still refusing to commit to a net zero target, and continues to waste taxpayer money funding new fossil fuel projects. Minister Ley herself is sitting on approval papers for a coal mine expansion in NSW while rejecting a massive renewable energy hub in Western Australia.

Climate change is the single greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. While addressing climate change certainly requires global cooperation, until the Federal Government takes emissions reduction seriously, it has no grounds to claim it is doing enough to protect one of the world’s most precious natural assets.

Read our 2018 report on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef

The post Professor Lesley Hughes responds to Sussan Ley and UNESCO’s Great Barrier Reef draft status appeared first on Climate Council.

By Professor Will Steffen, Climate Councillor

In recent days, thousands of people across New South Wales and the ACT have sweltered through another dangerous heatwave. Climate change is driving hotter and more frequent days like this and Australians are highly vulnerable.

The impacts of extreme weather on our health and wellbeing are escalating. The recent fires led to the deaths of nearly 500 Australians. The fires directly killed 33 people, and another 429 died from smoke inhalation. And heatwaves kill more Australians than all other extreme events combined. Climate-fuelled floods, droughts and violent storms all take their toll on our individual and community wellbeing.

Extreme weather events are also costly. A new report from the Climate Council finds the cost of extreme weather in Australia has more than doubled since the 1970s, and totalled $35 billion over the past decade. By 2038, extreme weather events driven by climate change, as well as the impacts of sea-level rise, could cost the Australian economy $100 billion every year.

The 2019-2020 period was remarkable for the number and intensity of extreme weather events, fuelled by climate change, that battered not only Australia but also many other parts of the world: unprecedented fires, extreme heat, powerful cyclones and devastating floods.

Here in Australia, the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires are still fresh in our minds. The impacts of this tragedy bear repeating. About 21% of our eastern broad-leafed forests burned, compared to an annual average of 2%. About three billion animals were either killed or displaced by the fires. The psychological damage that Australians suffered from this climate change-driven disaster was immense.

But that wasn’t all that climate change had in store for Australians in 2019-2020.

Exceptional heat in 2019 – the continent’s annual maximum temperature was over 2°C above average – challenged the coping capacity of humans. Penrith hit 48.9°C on 4 January 2020, making it the hottest place on Earth on that day. Over the 2019-2020 summer western Sydney recorded 37 days over 35°C.

Increasing heat in the oceans is also driving extreme events. Oceans around Australia have warmed by about 1°C since 1910, triggering three mass bleaching events of the Great Barrier Reef in just the last five years. The Reef is reeling, with 50% of its hard corals now dead. Kelp forests and sea grasses are also suffering permanent damage from warming seawater.

Other types of extreme weather events drove damaging impacts. Beaches and property along Sydney’s northern beaches and the NSW central coast were severely eroded by huge swells and high tides, riding on higher sea levels driven by climate change. In January 2020, giant hailstones rained down on Canberra, damaging cars and houses.

Globally, extreme weather events battered many parts of the planet, from Siberia to the tropics.

Perhaps the most astounding event of all was an intense, persistent and widespread heatwave in 2020 that spread across Siberia, breaking temperature records, triggering large fires, and thawing permafrost. The Russian town of Verkhoyansk recorded a temperature of 38°C in June, likely the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic.

There is no doubt that climate change played a large role in these weather extremes, particularly in their severity. As the Earth continues to warm, extreme weather events are occurring in a climate system that has become hotter and more energetic, and in an atmosphere that carries more water vapour. This increases the likelihood as well as the severity of extreme weather.

Scientists can now attribute particular extreme weather events to climate change by calculating the likelihood that a particular event could have occurred without climate change. For example, Australia’s hot spring in 2020 was ‘virtually impossible’ without the influence of climate change, and a similar attribution study showed that the 2020 Siberian heatwave was made at least 600 times more likely as a result of climate change.

Despite these disturbing realities, there is cause for some optimism. The United States under President Biden has prioritised climate action, our main trading partners have recently set net-zero emissions targets and the UN Secretary-General has called on governments to ensure their COVID recovery plans mark a ‘true turning point’ for people and the planet.

Read more about the impacts of climate change fuelled extreme weather in our new report, Hitting Home: the compounding costs of climate inaction.

The post The Deadly Costs of Climate Inaction appeared first on Climate Council.