For the picturesque coral colonies of the Earth's tropical oceans, it's as if the very water has betrayed them.The brilliant colors of the Great Barrier Reef and other swatches of coral depend on that water staying within a certain range of temperatures. But the past year has seen ocean temperatures rising sharply, beyond the point where the living coral effectively shuts down and turns white — a frequently-fatal process known as "bleaching." The world is now in the middle of a historic die-off of coral, an ecological slaughter prolonged by the Pacific warming known as El Niño. And for scientists like Kim Cobb, who uses coral samples to calculate past Pacific Ocean temperatures, it's a depressing scene.

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