https://www.open.online/2023/08/09/australia-el-nino-minaccia-grande-barriera-corallina
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El Nino, a periodic climatic event capable of causing intense atmospheric phenomena in several parts of the world, worries Australia.The Great Barrier Reef, which has the largest expanse of coral in the world with more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands, is at risk of continuing to deteriorate due to seasonal ocean warming.The scientific body raised the alarm Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), cited by Afp, which fears a massive coral bleaching event this year.It already happened last year when it transformed the bright coral into a white mass.In the following months the barrier partially managed to stabilize again, thanks to the rebalancing of temperatures, but it still remained fragile.“The coral reef is now at greater risk as climate change leads to more frequent and severe bleaching events,” explains the director of Aims, David Wachenfeld.
The precedents
The possibility that El Nino will develop in Australia in the coming weeks does not appear to be so remote.Or at least that's the forecast from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology."A single major disturbance could be enough to reverse the recent recovery of the coral reef," underlines the expert from the research center.Which is reminiscent of how massive coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, caused by heavy heat waves, has already occurred in 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022.Furthermore, it should be remembered that earlier this year, a team of United Nations experts had the barrier removed from the list of heritage sites considered "in danger".
What is El Niño
El Niño means child or boy in Spanish and is a name given to it by a team of South American fishermen who first reported periods of strangely warm water in the Pacific Ocean in the 1600s.More precisely, it was called El Niño de la Navidad, because the phenomenon occurred mainly in the month of December, but then it remained only as El Niño.The latter is formed when the surface of the central Pacific Ocean experiences a temperature increase of at least 0.5 °C for at least 5 months.The passage of El Nino causes a shift in equatorial air currents which usually leads to a concentration of rainfall in the southern part of the United States, in Canada and in certain areas of Latin America, South Africa, Australia and Asia.In Europe it tends to bring colder and drier winters in the north and milder and wetter winters in the south.