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		</div><p>An aerial survey of the Great Barrier Reef shows coral bleaching is sweeping across the area off the east of Australia for the third time in five years.</p>
<p>Bleaching has struck all three regions of the world’s largest coral reef system and is more widespread than ever, scientists from James Cook University in Queensland state said.</p>
<p>The air surveys of 1,036 reefs in the past two weeks found bleached coral in the northern, central and southern areas, James Cook University professor Terry Hughes said.</p>
<p><em>“As summers grow hotter and hotter, we no longer need an El Nino event to trigger mass bleaching at the scale of the Great Barrier Reef,”</em> Prof Hughes said.</p>
<p><em>“Of the five events we have seen so far, only 1998 and 2016 occurred during El Nino conditions.”</em></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GreatBarrierReef?src=hash&;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GreatBarrierReef</a> research: First the north, then the middle, now widespread <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/coral?src=hash&;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#coral</a> bleaching including in the south. In just 5 years!</p>
<p>We are running out of time to curb anthropogenic heating.<a href="https://t.co/ou0W4n0Nl7">https://t.co/ou0W4n0Nl7</a> <a href="https://t.co/aGPnx7vLFz">pic.twitter.com/aGPnx7vLFz</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Terry Hughes (@ProfTerryHughes) <a href="https://twitter.com/ProfTerryHughes/status/1247271799613603840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2020</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>El Nino is a climate pattern that starts with a band of warm ocean water in the central and east-central Pacific around the equator and affects global weather.</p>
<p>The Great Barrier Reef is made up of 2,900 separate reefs and 900 islands.</p>
<p>It is unable to recover because there is not enough time between bleaching events.</p>
<p><em>“We have already seen the first example of back-to-back bleaching — in the consecutive summers of 2016 and 2017,”</em> Mr Hughes said, adding that the number of reefs spared from bleaching is shrinking as it becomes more widespread.</p>
<p>He said underwater surveys will be carried out later in the year to assess the extent of damage.</p>
<p>In early March, David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said the reef was facing a critical period of heat stress over the coming weeks following the most widespread coral bleaching the natural wonder has ever endured.</p>
<p>The authority, the government agency that manages the coral expanse off northeast Australia, said ocean temperatures over the next month would be crucial to how the reef recovers from heat-induced bleaching.</p>
<p>“The forecasts … indicate that we can expect ongoing levels of thermal stress for at least the next two weeks and maybe three or four weeks,” Mr Wachenfeld said in a weekly update on the reef’s health.</p>
<p>“So this still is a critical time for the reef and it is the weather conditions over the next two to four weeks that will determine the final outcome,” he said.</p>
<p>Ocean temperatures across most of the reef were 0.5 to 1.5C above the March average.</p>
<p>In parts of the marine park in the south close to shore that avoided the ravages of previous bleachings, ocean temperatures were 2-3C above average.</p>
<p>The authority had received 250 reports of sightings of bleached coral due to elevated ocean temperatures during an unusually hot February.</p>
<p>The 133,360-square mile World Heritage-listed colourful coral network has been devastated by four coral bleaching events since 1998.</p>
<p>The most deadly were the most recent, in those consecutive summers of 2016 and 2017.</p>
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