Climate-resilient coral species offer hope for the world’s reefs

Two of the world’s most ubiquitous species of reef-building corals seem surprisingly able to survive and even cope well with climate change, according to a new study—at least so long as global warming is kept below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target set by the Paris Agreement.

“We found hope,” says Rowan McLachlan, a coral expert at Oregon State University and lead author of the study published today in Nature Scientific Reports. 

Hope has been a scarce thing lately on coral reefs. As a result of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, they face chronically warmer water, more intense marine heat waves, and an increasingly acidic ocean. That’s in addition to local stresses from pollution and overfishing. 

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