Dying coral reefs could slow climate change

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By Elise Cutts, Science. 

Excerpt: VIENNA— Climate change is causing the oceans to get warmer and more acidic, making it harder for corals to build and maintain their mineral skeletons. Eventually, reefs will literally start to dissolve. It’s a grim fate, but one with a surprising silver lining. Research presented this week here at a conference of the European Geophysical Union shows dissolving reefs will slow climate change, by boosting the oceans’ ability to soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere. By the end of the century, the oceans could be absorbing up to 400 megatons of additional carbon per year. That’s more than the annual emissions of Australia or the United Kingdom. No one had actually calculated the magnitude of this “feedback” before, and it’s big enough that climate models need to account for it, says Jens Daniel Müller, a biogeochemist at ETH Zürich who wasn’t involved in the work. “Often we focus more on positive feedbacks, where the process is destabilizing” for the climate, he says. “In this case it’s a potential negative feedback, and that makes it quite interesting.” But, Müller adds, the feedback shouldn’t be misunderstood as a reason to stop reducing emissions.... 

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