Global coral reefs have lost about 9.5% of hard-coral cover relative to their 1980-2009 average, according to the GCRMN's 2025 global assessment released 31 Au…
GCRMN uses 1980-2009 as its monitoring reference period, with an estimated average global hard-coral cover of 30.2%. This is a monitoring baseline, not an untouched pre-…
A major El Nino drove extreme ocean heat, producing the first event recognised as a global coral bleaching event. NOAA estimates roughly 21% of global reef area was expo…
A strong El Nino year contributed to widespread ocean heat, exposing an estimated 37% of global reef area to bleaching-level stress. GCRMN's current analysis associates…
Bleaching-level heat stress affected an estimated 68.2% of global reef area over this multi-year event, which included back-to-back bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef i…
In the two years following the 2014-2017 event, global average hard-coral cover rose by roughly 6% relative - the clearest evidence in the modern record that coral reefs…
Confirmed by NOAA on 15 April 2024, this became the largest global bleaching event on record. From January 2023 through September 2025, bleaching-level heat stress affec…
AIMS's 2025 survey found northern GBR hard-coral cover falling from 39.8% to 30.0% (its largest annual decline on record), central cover falling from 33.2% to 28.6%, and…
Released 31 August 2026, this is GCRMN's most comprehensive global assessment yet: 21.1 million observations from 87,299 surveys at 36,886 reef sites across 124 countrie…
2030 is not a coral-extinction date. It is the target year in IPCC's 1.5C-aligned emissions pathways (roughly 43% below 2019 levels) and in the Kunming-Montreal Global B…
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