NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) has been providing satellite global near-real-time 50 km (0.5 by 0.5-degree spatial resolution precisely) monitoring of thermal stress that causes mass coral bleaching to the U.S. and international coral reef communities since 1997. Our operational monitoring products, including HotSpot and Degree Heating Week (DHW), derived from our operational nighttime SST measured by POES AVHRR, have been very successful in detecting and monitoring the thermal stress.

While SST monitoring measures the SST condition at any given moment in time, short-term SST trend over the past few weeks provides another layer of environmental information indicating the pace and direction of the variation of SST and coral bleaching thermal stress. The image shown at the top of this page is the map of the short-term trend of CRW operational satellite global 50 km nighttime twice-weekly SST over the past 21 days. Six twice-weekly global SSTs are included in the calculation. These products are at 50 km resolution produced in near-real-time from our near-real-time twice-weekly 50 km nighttime SST data. As our other twice-weekly near-real-time products, these products are produced twice-weekly on every Monday (using AVHRR data from the previous Thursday through Sunday) and on every Thursday (using AVHRR data from the previous Monday through Wednesday).

These new products have just been developed. Your feedback is important for us to improve our monitoring products. Please send your comments and suggestions to coralreefwatch@noaa.gov.