The Great Barrier Reef is undergoing a major coral bleaching event for the second year in a row. | National Geographic

The Great Barrier Reef is iconic because of its beauty, its diversity but most importantly, its scale. This expansive ecosystem is made up of 3000 individual reefs across an area over 2,300 kilometres (1,430 miles) long in an area roughly the size of Italy. Predicting where, when and why coral bleaching and other disturbances will be felt on the Reef is incredibly important to guide decisions about its conservation and management: https://www.barrierreef.org/news/explainers/predicting-coral-blea