By Sara Gates Source: Huffington Post

The Great Barrier Reef may be in serious trouble.

Unless immediate action is taken, the famous coral reef system will be unable to recover from the “irreversible” damage that climate change will wreak on it by 2030, a new report out of Australia warns.

Published by the World Wildlife Fund-Australia, the University of Queensland report paints a bleak picture for the future of the ecosystem.

“If we don’t increase our commitment to solve the burgeoning stress from local and global sources, the reef will disappear,” the report, prepared for Earth Hour’s upcoming annual event, states. “This is not a hunch or alarmist rhetoric by green activists. It is the conclusion of the world’s most qualified coral reef experts.”

The reef has already experienced extensive damage in the past few decades from tropical storms and other harmful events, which can lead to coral bleaching, a condition that occurs when stress from changes causes coral to weaken and turn white. A 2012 report indicated that 50 percent of the Great Barrier Reef has disappeared since 1985.

Read full article at Huffington Post