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Cited by 292

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Increasing thermal stress for tropical coral reefs: 1871–2017

Open access
Lough, J. M., Anderson, K. D., Hughes, T. P.·2018·Scientific Reports

Abstract

Tropical corals live close to their upper thermal limit making them vulnerable to unusually warm summer sea temperatures. The resulting thermal stress can lead to breakdown of the coral-algal symbiosis, essential for the functioning of reefs, and cause coral bleaching. Mass coral bleaching is a modern phenomenon associated with increases in reef temperatures due to recent global warming. Widespread bleaching has typically occurred during El Niño events. We examine the historical level of stress for 100 coral reef locations with robust bleaching histories. The level of thermal stress (based on a degree heating month index, DHMI) at these locations during the 2015–2016 El Niño was unprecedented over the period 1871–2017 and exceeded that of the strong 1997–1998 El Niño. The DHMI was also 5 times the level of thermal stress associated with the ‘pre-industrial’, 1877–1878, El Niño. Coral reefs have, therefore, already shown their vulnerability to the modest (~0.92 °C) global warming that has occurred to date. Estimates of future levels of thermal stress suggest that even the optimistic 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target is insufficient to prevent more frequent mass bleaching events for the world’s reefs. Effectively, reefs of the future will not be the same as those of the past.

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Metadata

Authors
Lough, J. M., Anderson, K. D., & Hughes, T. P.
Venue
Scientific Reports
Published
2018-04-17
Volume
8
Issue
1
Pages
6079-6079
ISSN
2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2800525562
Cited by
292
References
45
FWCI
22.99
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Increasing thermal stress for tropical coral reefs: 1871–2017. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41598-018-24530-9
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Lough, J. M., Anderson, K. D., & Hughes, T. P. (2018). Increasing thermal stress for tropical coral reefs: 1871–2017. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24530-9

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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