Marine heatwave set off 'carbon bomb' in world's largest seagrass meadow

22% of seagrass in Western Australia’s Shark Bay was lost after 2010-11 heatwave, causing release of up to 9m tonnes of carbon

A marine heatwave in Western Australia in 2010 set off a massive “carbon bomb”, damaging the world’s largest seagrass meadow, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon that had been collected for thousands of years below the surface.

Although Australia doesn’t currently count carbon released from damaged seagrass meadows in its official greenhouse gas emissions, if it did, the results mean those figures might need to be revised upwards by more than 20%.

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