When environmentalists want to highlight the harm from global warming they frequently present the dire plight of the world’s coral reefs as a prime example. Now, in The New York Times Science section, Katharine Houreld reports that a new scientific study documents that the plight is far less dire than environmentalists had previously thought:
(p. D2) As spiking ocean temperatures are devastating reefs around the world, a handful of scientists have found a reason for cautious optimism. They’ve used artificial intelligence to detect sheltered pockets where cool currents, reduced exposure to sunlight and locations outside cyclone paths mean corals are more likely to survive.
The study, led by the Wildlife Conservation Society and presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya, is currently undergoing peer review for publication in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
Five scientists identified 42 factors that create the conditions for the coral havens, called refugia, and then ran those through a program with nearly 38,000 human observations of coral cover and composition gathered over 65 years. The program identified more than 64,000 square miles of climate-resilient ocean in 72 countries.
The work found three times as many refugia as a landmark 2018 assessment known as the 50 Reefs Study, the first paper to systematically identify areas around the globe where coral might still be saved.
Houreld’s article is:
(Note: the online version of the Houreld article was updated June 29, 2026, and has the title “Climate: There’s a Bit of Good News for Coral Reefs.” Where there is a slight difference in wording, the quotations above follow the print version.)
The academic preprint summarized in Houreld’s article is: