Half the world's coral reefs could be facing "unsuitable conditions" by the year 2035 if climate change continues at its current pace, according to new research published on Tuesday.

Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa warned those conditions could occur under a worst-case scenario, in their findings published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

The ability of ecosystems to adapt to environmental changes largely depends upon the type and impact of those specific environmental stressors.

Coral reefs are particularly sensitive to unsuitable environmental conditions.

"The capacity of ecosystems to persist and potentially adapt to environmental change is primarily determined by the time period in which environmental variables remain suitable. Here, we aim to estimate the year after which environmental disturbances permanently exceed tolerance thresholds," author Renee Setter wrote in the study's introduction.

Setter and colleagues found that without any changes to slow the effects of climate change, 2050 is the median year where environmental conditions are projected to become unsuitable for the world's coral reefs using just a single environmental stressor. That date moves up to 2035 when multiple stressors are considered. Researchers predicted that by 2055, the majority of the world's coral reefs would be facing unsuitable conditions based on at least one of the five stressors studied.

"While the negative impacts of climate change on coral reefs are well known, this research shows that they are actually worse than anticipated due to a broad combination of climate change-induced stressors," said Setter, a doctoral student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

"It was also enlightening to find that coral would face multiple stressors - posing an even greater hurdle and challenge that would need to be overcome to increase the possibility of survival."

Researchers plan to look at how climate change is projected to affect individual coral species, identifying which are more likely to survive unsuitable conditions, and which are more vulnerable.

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