Daily 5 km Satellite Coral Bleaching Monitoring
(Experimental product)

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Current Regional Images
Alert Area:  Global | 45ns | East | West | Pacific | Coral Triangle [big] | Caribbean | Florida | Hawaii | GBR
Hotspots:  Global | 45ns | East | West | Pacific | Coral Triangle [big] | Caribbean | Florida | Hawaii | GBR
DHW:  Global | 45ns | East | West | Pacific | Coral Triangle [big] | Caribbean | Florida | Hawaii | GBR
SST:  Global | 45ns | East | West | Pacific | Coral Triangle [big] | Caribbean | Florida | Hawaii | GBR
SST Anomaly:  Global | 45ns | East | West | Pacific | Coral Triangle [big] | Caribbean | Florida | Hawaii | GBR
Archived Regional Images
 (Alert Area and Degree Heating Week available since 9 June 2012; others since 27 March 2012)

Product Description

The NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) experimental daily global 5 km (0.05 degree exactly) satellite coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring product suite presented here is a new-generation version of the current operational twice-weekly 50 km (0.5 degree exactly) monitoring product suite. The high-resolution 5 km suite currently includes sea surface temperature (SST), SST Anomaly, Coral Bleaching HotSpots, Degree Heating Weeks (DHW), and Bleaching Alert Area products, matching to the core operational 50 km satellite products. High-resolution (5 km) version of CRW's other operational products, such as Virtual Stations and the automated bleaching e-mail alerts, will come soon after the final determination of representative satellite pixel locations for select reef sites in the global tropical oceans is made. The 5 km product suite provides two major improvements over the current operational 50 km product suite (click here to see a detailed description):

  1. New-generation SST Analysis for Deriving the Product Suite

    1. Improved Data Density and Spatial and Temporal Resolutions

    2. Improved SST Quality with New-Generation SST Algorithm

  2. Improved Climatology

This daily global 5 km coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring product suite, released experimentally in June 2012, significantly advances CRW's capability for near-real-time satellite coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring. The new 5 km products will comprise the core of CRW's new-generation Decision Support System (DDS) for coral reef management. With higher spatial and temporal resolution products, CRW can now provide service at or close to reef-scales. After further testing and evaluation of the 5 km product suite, CRW's decades-old operational 50 km product suite, which has provided pioneer service to global coral reef communities, will be retired.

Development of the new-generation 5 km product suite has been accomplished through a collaboration of CRW, the University of South Florida, NASA-Ames, the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, with funding support from the NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting program and the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. The 5 km product suite will undergo continuous improvements over the next few years.

CRW will continue to produce the current operational product suite until the 5 km product suite becomes operational. There will be some differences between the two product suites in certain areas, and user discretion is advised. The expectation is that the 5 km high-resolution product suite will be more accurate in general, due to the improved data quality, density, and spatial and temporal resolutions.

Detailed Description of 5 km Product Suite

CRW Operational Twice-weekly 50 km Product Suite