NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program from satellite observations

Strong, A. E.; Liu, Gang; Skirving, William; Eakin, C. Mark

doi:10.1080/19475683.2011.576266

Cited by 41 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Since the early 1980s, however, mass coral bleaching has affected entire reefs and regions, often resulting in significant mortality of reef-building corals. The absence of pre 1979 scientific reports in addition to the close relationship between bleaching and elevated sea temperature, plus considerable laboratory, and mesocosm studies, strongly support the conclusion that mass coral bleaching and mortality are novel and are caused by warm water coral reefs being exposed to rising sea temperatures (Hoegh-Guldberg and Smith, 1989;Glynn, 1993Glynn, , 2012Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999;Glynn et al, 2001;Hoegh-Guldberg et al, 2007, 2014Baker et al, 2008;Eakin C. M. et al, 2010;Strong et al, 2011;Gattuso et al, 2014b). The latest cycle of mass coral bleaching in 2016 (HoeghGuldberg and Ridgway, 2016) is reputedly the worst on record and accompanies the warmest years on record (King and Hawkins, 2016; https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaadata-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally).…”

Section: Biological Responses To a Rapidly Warming And Acidifying Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coral Reef Ecosystems under Climate Change and Ocean Acidification

et al. 2017

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Coral reefs are found in a wide range of environments, where they provide food and habitat to a large range of organisms as well as providing many other ecological goods and services. Warm-water coral reefs, for example, occupy shallow sunlit, warm, and alkaline waters in order to grow and calcify at the high rates necessary to build and maintain their calcium carbonate structures. At deeper locations (40-150 m), "mesophotic" (low light) coral reefs accumulate calcium carbonate at much lower rates (if at all in some cases) yet remain important as habitat for a wide range of organisms, including those important for fisheries. Finally, even deeper, down to 2,000 m or more, the so-called "cold-water" coral reefs are found in the dark depths. Despite their importance, coral reefs are facing significant challenges from human activities including pollution, over-harvesting, physical destruction, and climate change. In the latter case, even lower greenhouse gas emission scenarios (such as Representative Concentration Pathway RCP 4.5) are likely drive the elimination of most warm-water coral reefs by 2040-2050. Cold-water corals are also threatened by warming temperatures and ocean acidification although evidence of the direct effect of climate change is less clear. Evidence that coral reefs can adapt at rates which are sufficient for them to keep up with rapid ocean warming and acidification is minimal, especially given that corals are long-lived and hence have slow rates of evolution. Conclusions that coral reefs will migrate to higher latitudes as they warm are equally unfounded, with the observations of tropical species appearing at high latitudes "necessary but not sufficient" evidence that entire coral reef ecosystems are shifting. On the contrary, coral reefs are likely to degrade rapidly over the next 20 years, presenting fundamental challenges for the 500 million people who derive food, income, coastal protection, and a range of other services from coral reefs. Unless rapid advances to the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement occur over the next decade, hundreds of millions of people are likely to face increasing amounts of poverty and social disruption, and, in some cases, regional insecurity.

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Section: Biological Responses To a Rapidly Warming And Acidifying Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coral Reef Ecosystems under Climate Change and Ocean Acidification

et al. 2017

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“…To hindcast records of local thermal stress, we calculated the number of degree heating weeks (DHW) accumulated at each reef site as well as offshore (Liu et al 2003;Strong et al 2011; http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/methodology/ methodology.php). To calculate DHW, we first identified days on which water temperatures were more than 1uC above their historical maximum monthly mean (MMM) and calculated the daily temperature anomaly (or hotspot) for those days.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comparison of daily-averaged 1 km SST against daily average SST data recorded at 17 6 1 m depth between August 2010 and November 2011 from a mooring 4 km off the Ningaloo reef crest and 90 km to the north of Coral Bay (Integrated Marine Ocean Observing System, http:// wa.aodn.org.au/wa/) indicated close agreement between the two data sets (SST sat 5 1.026 3 SST obs 2 0.25uC, rootmean-square error [RMSE] 5 0.46uC, r 2 5 0.95, n 5 451). The daily temperature climatology for waters offshore of Coral Bay was linearly interpolated from mean monthly averages over the 20 year period spanning 01 January 1990 through 31 December 2009 (Strong et al 2011). Because the high-resolution 1 km SST data were available only from January 2010 onward, we obtained records of daily SST between 01 January 1990 through 31 December 2009 from another global high-resolution (25 km) SST data set (herein referred to as 25 km SST) blended from a combination of multiple satellite Level 2 AVHRR sensor data and in situ ship and buoy observations provided by the National Climate Data Centre (Reynolds et al 2007).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the drivers of spatial variation in thermal forcing across a nearshore reef system and implications for coral bleaching

Falter

Zhang

Lowe

et al. 2014

Limnology & Oceanography

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We examined the seasonal and spatial variability in the temperatures of nearshore reef waters over 19 months across Coral Bay at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. Local deviations in the mean daily temperature of nearshore reef waters from offshore values (DT) were a linear function of the combined effect of net atmospheric heating (Q net ) and offshore wave height and period H s ffiffiffiffi ffi t p p . Whereas intra-annual variation in local heat exchange was driven mainly by seasonal changes in shortwave radiation, intra-annual variation in local cooling was driven mostly by changes in relative humidity (r 2 5 0.60) and wind speed (r 2 5 0.31) that exhibited no apparent seasonality. We demonstrate good agreement between nearshore reef temperatures modeled from offshore sea surface temperatures, offshore wave forcing, and local atmospheric heat fluxes with observed temperatures using a simple linear model (r 2 5 0.31-0.69, root-mean-square error 5 0.4-0.9uC). Using these modeled nearshore reef temperature records, we show that thermal stresses across the reef reached between 16uC weeks and 22uC weeks in the summer of 2011 when a mass coral bleaching event was reported, and between 12uC weeks and 13uC weeks in the following summer of 2012 when no mass bleaching was reported. After compensating for differences between observed and modeled thermal stresses, we found that maximum thermal stresses across the reef likely reached as high as 18-34uC weeks in the summer of 2011. The approach used here could thus improve our ability to predict spatial variation in thermal stress and bleaching across other wavedriven nearshore reef systems.

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“…Table 18-10 summarizes new evidence concerning this RFC. Generally, the strongest evidence of detected impacts related to extremes concerns warm-water corals where bleaching has been linked directly to hightemperature spells (Box 18-2; Baker et al, 2008;Strong et al, 2011). Outside of these coral reef systems, however, evidence for extreme event impacts is limited and mostly local.…”

Section: Reasons For Concernmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is known that thermal stress can trigger coral bleaching (Muscatine, 1986;Hoegh-Guldberg and Smith, 1989;Jones et al, 1998). Mass bleaching events that affect entire reefs or coastal regions can occur when local or regional temperatures exceed the typical summer maximum for a period of a few weeks (Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999;Baker et al, 2008;Strong et al, 2011). The effect of elevated temperature is exacerbated by strong solar irradiance (Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999).…”

Section: Box 18-2 | Attribution Of Mass Coral Bleaching Events To CLImentioning

confidence: 99%