Cloudiness delays projected impact of climate change on coral reefs

The increasing frequency of mass coral bleaching and associated mortality threaten the future warmwater reefs. Although thermal stress is widely recognized as main driver bleaching, exposure to light also plays a central role. Future projections impacts climate change on reefs have date focused temperature not considered role clouds in attenuating response corals. In this study, we develop temperature- light-based prediction algorithms using historical sea surface temperature, cloud cover fraction downwelling shortwave radiation data together with global-scale observational dataset observations. model applied CMIP6 output from GFDL-ESM4 Earth System Model under four different scenarios estimate effect incorporating cloudiness frequency, without adaptation or acclimation by results show that low emission scenario SSP1-2.6 into delays conditions multiple decades some regions, yet majority (>70%) reef cells still experience dangerously frequent end century. moderate SSP2-4.5, however, increase sufficient overwhelm mitigating mid-century. Thermal corals could further shift up 40 years, would century SPP2-4.5. findings multivariate models factors like may improve near-term outlook for help identify refugia. Nonetheless, long-term remains questionable if world stays higher emissions path.