Coral reefs cover approximately 0.10 to 0.25% of the marine environment and yet are home to around 25% of marine species and support the livelihoods of more than 500 million people. They face a wide range of threats, with the impact of global warming gaining most attention due to its frequently claimed causal link to coral bleaching. Here we review a decade of research into the micrometeorology of Heron Reef, a lagoonal platform coral reef in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Using novel pontoon‐mounted eddy covariance systems, we show that often >80% of net radiation is partitioned into heating the water overlying the reef, the reef benthos, and substrate. Significant spatial variability in energy and trace gas exchanges occurs over the reef in response to different geomorphic and hydrodynamic conditions. Synoptic weather patterns that bring light winds, clear skies, and high humidity, result in reef scale meteorology that appears to have a greater influence on coral bleaching events than the background oceanic warming trend. The reef develops its own convective internal boundary layer, with potential to influence cloud development and therefore the surface energy balance. Knowledge of such local effects is lacking, so it is recommended that future research is needed into reef scale processes and how they interact with larger‐scale forcing.
Coral reefs represent abrupt changes in surface roughness, temperature, and humidity in oceanic and coastal locations. This leads to formation of internal atmospheric boundary layers that grow vertically in response to turbulent mixing which conveys changes in surface properties into the prevailing wind. As a result, coral reefs under favourable conditions couple to the overlying atmosphere. Here we present rare observations of coral reef – atmospheric interactions during summer monsoon conditions on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, and a desert fringing coral reef in the Gulf of Eilat, Israel. We show that in the hyper-arid location of the Gulf of Eilat where air temperatures are greater than water temperatures, a stable atmospheric boundary inhibits coupling of the reef to the atmosphere. In contrast, under monsoon conditions on the Great Barrier Reef, the coral reef is shown to couple to the overlying atmosphere leading to the formation of a convective internal boundary layer in which convective exchange of heat and moisture influences cloud and possibly precipitation. We conclude that understanding these processes is essential for determining the role of coral reefs in coastal meteorology, and whether through coupling with the overlying atmosphere coral reefs may regulate their meteorology by triggering formation of cloud and/or vertical exchange on aerosols and their precursor gases such as Dimethyl sulphide.
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