Some corals are better at handling the heat

But, says Joanie Kleypas of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, some corals are more resilient than others. For instance, corals in the Red Sea are able to withstand hotter temperatures, because they have had thousands of years to adapt to the heat. The issue right now, says Dr Kleypas, is that human activity has caused global temperatures to rise faster than natural selection can breed resilience.