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Warming and acidification squeeze coral habitat

Modeled coral-reef suitability falls about 27–30% in shallow water by 2070, worst in the Western Pacific Warm Pool.

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What spatial scale did they model?

Global coral habitat at 1° × 1°.

Which two machine-learning methods?

MaxEnt and Boosted Regression Trees (BRT).

How did presence-cell suitability ≥0.5 change?

From 77% in 2010 to 66% in 2040 and 54% by 2070.

How large is the shallow-water decline?

27–30% over the next 60 years across four models.

Where is the loss most pronounced?

Western Pacific Warm Pool, affecting the Coral Triangle.

What mainly drives the decline?

Short-term SST maxima.

How does acidification-only compare with warming-only?

Ω Arag decline is more subdued than the SST-driven loss.

What happens if CO2 exceeds about 550 ppm?

Most reef Ω Arag falls below today's coral-distribution limit of about 3.25.

Should managers write off marginal reefs?

No: they are not necessarily a lost cause.

Which basins look more likely to keep reefs?

Much of the central and western Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, if other stresses are minimized.

Did A2, A1B, and B1 scenarios diverge strongly by 2070?

Projected suitability changes were very similar across those three CO2 scenarios.