Scientists have noticed something at the Great Barrier Reef, and that something is having a massive impact on the world’s largest coral reef system. Experts claim that the Great Barrier Reef may be on its final deathbead as gigantic dying events over the past two years are causing irreparable harm to it.

Global warming caused by climate change appears to have caused a widespread bleaching event that damaged 95 percent of the northernmost third of the reef. And now this year, as the reef still recovers from that, the middle third is suffering from bleaching according to an aerial survey from the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

A study published in the journal Nature describes the fears of scientists who see the situation of the Great Barrier Reef becoming bleaker every day. The expedition found hundreds of miles of coral ecosystems had died because of temperatures warming too high, killing the corals.

“During 2015–2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s,” the paper’s abstract states. “Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures.

“The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year. Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in 2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat.”