Scientists have predicted that the world's third mass coral bleaching will happen early next year and damage about 38 per cent of the world's coral reefs.

A study undertaken by the US National Ocean Atmospheric Administration and the University of Queensland (UQ) has forecast that the event could be the worst on record due to increasingly high ocean temperatures.

Bleaching is a phenomenon that turns corals white or fades their colours.

The cause is consistently warmer than average ocean temperatures.

UQ's Global Change Institute director Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said the impact on the Great Barrier Reef would be significant.

"If conditions continue to worsen, the Great Barrier Reef is set to suffer from widespread coral bleaching and subsequent mortality, the most common effect of rising sea temperatures," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

The first mass coral bleaching occurred in 1998, when about 16 per cent of the world's reefs were affected.

Up to 10 per cent of the corals on Queensland's Great Barrier Reef died.

The Great Barrier Reef narrowly avoided a worse event in 2010 after several storms cooled the coastline.

Global Change Institute's Doctor Tyrone Ridgway said the potential 2016 event was going to be "potentially worse in terms of temperature than what we saw in 1998".

"Coral bleaching doesn't necessarily mean that corals are going to die," he said.

"If the stress does dissipate fairly rapidly after the event there's a good chance the corals could recover but until we experience the temperature into the summer we're not going to know what the extent is going to be."

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles said the Government could help lessen the impact.

"The actions that we're taking as part of the Great Barrier Reef long-term sustainability plan will better improve the reef's resilience to these kind of warming events," he said.

"But sadly if the world doesn't do what we need to do to limit global warming then this is going to get worse."