Overall steps to check upon climate change needs to be taken, including reduction of carbon emissions, to get the maximum benefit of cloud brightening to keep the reef from getting bleached
Australia is so very proud of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the best-known natural attractions of the continent. Not surprising at all that it lobbied real hard when the United Nations almost declared it an endangered World Heritage Site. Today Australian scientists are hard at work to stop the corals of the Great Barrier Reef from getting bleached in the warm waters and high temperatures.
Researchers are spraying microscopic sea particles with turbines to thicken existing clouds to protect the environmental treasure, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem located off Australia’s northeast coast.
This so-called Cloud Brightening project helps reduce the sunlight, which in turn makes the temperatures come down. The process is to spray droplets of ocean water into the sky to form clouds.
Daniel Harrison, of the Southern Cross University, who runs the project, says that the clouds are formed when water droplets evaporate, leaving only tiny salt crystals that float up into the atmosphere, allowing water vapour to condense around them.
Valuable data on the atmosphere is gathered at this time, when corals are at most risk of bleaching in the light and warm water
The temperature over the Reef will only reduce if this process is made to run for a considerable length of time, few weeks to a couple of months, at a time when the corals are plunged in a marine heat-wave.
The end of the Southern Hemisphere summer in March is when the second trial of the project is to happen. This is the time when bleaching takes place as the Reef off Australia’s northeast is at its hottest.
Valuable data on the atmosphere is gathered at this time, when corals are at most risk of bleaching in the light and warm water.
“Bleaching stress” is cut by 50 per cent to 60 per cent on the undersea ecosystem, when the light over the reef is cut by 6 per cent during the summers. However, overall steps to check upon climate change needs to be taken, including reduction of carbon emissions, to get the maximum benefit of cloud brightening.
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