Many factors have contributed to vast damage of the ocean's coral reefs. Government agencies and other organizations use computer modeling to study the progression and impact of this phenomenon. What factor is most likely to limit the accuracy of these projections?

Modelling uncertainty limits the accuracy of model predictions. Coral bleaching occurs because the seawater temperature is increasing. This is primarily because of climate change. Predicting climate change in the future is highly uncertain, as it is basically long-term weather prediction that depends on certain carbon emission scenarios. It is well known that normal weather prediction becomes inaccurate after around 14 days, so predicting long-term climate in the next 100 years or more is highly uncertain. There are a multitude of global circulation models (GCMs) that have been developed by different countries, all of which tend to predict widely different climate. Added to this uncertainty is that GCMs work on large spatial scales, and a technique called downscaling is used to predict more localised climate change. Since there are several ways of downscaling, this adds an additional level of uncertainty. Finally, we cannot be sure what carbon emissions will be released to the atmosphere in the future that will drive climate change, another source of uncertainty.