Physical monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef to understand ecological responses to climate change

Significant warming of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has already occurred and many components of this complex ecosystem are known to be both sensitive and vulnerable to a changing climate. Assessing biological responses of the GBR requires high-quality, ongoing observations of the physical environment over a range of spatial and temporal scales. The monitoring capabilities of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) through automatic weather stations, remote sensing, ocean moorings and an intensive water temperature logger program have already provided critical measurements that link biological responses with the physical environment. This monitoring program is now being enhanced and expanded through the GBR Ocean Observing System (GBROOS). Here, we describe the history and development of some of these monitoring programs. A commitment to such long-term, detailed and regionally specific physical environment monitoring programs is essential to identify how the GBR climate is changing and which parts of this unique ecosystem may be more or less susceptible to the evolving consequences of a rapidly warming world. * Chapter originally submitted in January 2009.