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Coral Reef Watch Satellite Bleaching Alert System
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NOAA's Coral Reef Watch (CRW) Satellite Bleaching Alert (SBA) system is an 
automated coral bleaching e-mail alert system designed to monitor the status of 
thermal stress conducive to coral bleaching via the use of the CRW global 
satellite near-real time HotSpot suite of products. The SBA was developed by 
the NOAA CRW satellite team as a tool for coral reef managers, scientists, and 
other interested people.

Users can subscribe to these alerts for our experimental Virtual Stations by 
sending an e-mail to coralreefwatch@noaa.gov.  Tell us which stations you are 
interested in, and we will add you to our list.  The e-mails look just like the 
operational alerts (http://coralreefwatch-satops.noaa.gov/SBA.html), but these 
experimental alerts are available for a wider range of Virtual Stations on a 
non-operational basis.

An automated e-mail will be sent to a subscriber for a reef site when the status
level of thermal stress changes regardless of the current status level, or when 
the current Degree Heating Week value exceeds the historical maximum Degree 
Heating Week value for that reef site. The status level of thermal stress at 
selected reef sites is updated twice per week.

There are five status levels: "No Stress", "Bleaching Watch", "Bleaching 
Warning", "Bleaching Alert Level 1" and "Bleaching Alert Level 2". These levels 
are defined in terms of the CRW HotSpot and Degree Heating Weeks (DHW) products:

        No Stress                       HotSpot ? 0
        Bleaching Watch                 0 < HotSpot < 1
        Bleaching Warning               1 <= HotSpot and 0 < DHW < 4
        Bleaching Alert Level 1         1 <= HotSpot and 4 <= DHW < 8
        Bleaching Alert Level 2         1 <= HotSpot and DHW >= 8


The existence of a HotSpot value indicates that thermal stress potentially 
conducive to bleaching is present, and the value of the HotSpot quantifies the 
intensity of the thermal stress. A Degree Heating Week (DHW) is a measure of 
accumulated thermal stress over a consecutive 12-week period.

Please note that since the DHW is a 12-week accumulated anomaly, it is possible 
for a location to have a non-zero DHW value when the HotSpot value is already 
less than one or even zero. Hence, at a status level of "No Stress" or 
"Bleaching Watch", it is possible for the corresponding DHW value to be greater 
than zero.

Your report of any bleaching observations (including observations of no 
bleaching) will be greatly appreciated. Bleaching observations can be entered 
on the NOAA/ReefBase Collaborative online bleaching report form 
(http://www.reefbase.org/contribute/bleachingreport.aspx).

Should you have any questions or feedback on the Satellite Bleaching Alert 
system, please send e-mail to coralreefwatch@noaa.gov.