CoralBleachRisk-Global projections of coral bleaching risk in the 21stcentury

Abstract

AbstractTiming, duration, and severity of marine heatwaves are changing rapidly in response to anthropogenic climate change, thereby increasing the frequency of coral bleaching events. Mass coral bleaching events occur because of cumulative heat stress, which is commonly quantified through Degree Heating Weeks (DHW). Here we introduceCoralBleachRisk, a daily-resolution global dataset that characterises sea surface temperatures, heat stress anomalies, and the timing, duration, and magnitude of severe coral bleaching conditions from the recent past (1985) to the future (2100) under three contrasting Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Our projections are downscaled to a 0.5° resolution (~50km), bias-corrected and validated using remotely sensed data of sea surface temperatures and a global dataset of historical coral bleaching events. An accompanying online software tool allows non-specialist users to access aggregated metrics of coral bleaching risk and generate time series projections of coral vulnerability for Earth’s coral reefs. More broadly, our dataset enables regional to global comparisons of future trends in severe coral bleaching risk and the identification of potential climate refugia for corals.