Nearly half of tropical coral species face extinction, report shows

Bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef outside Cairns Australia during a mass bleaching event, thought to have been caused by heat stress due to warmer water temperatures as a result of global climate change. Getty Images - Brett Monroe Garner

Almost half of all warm-water species of coral are threatened with extinction due to climate change, a new report said on Wednesday. This marked a significant increase from the last assessment in 2008, when a third of all species was listed as threatened.

The updated risk assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was announced at the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, which is being skipped by the leaders of many top polluting nations.