Improving thermal stress prediction for coral reefs from observational, modelled and proxy datasets across the Tropics

Coral reefs are extremely vulnerable to climate-driven warming of the ocean, which threatens their survival. Coral responses to rising temperatures are currently studied and predicted using sea surface temperature (SST) from multiple sources such as satellite products, temperature loggers, global circulation models and coral core derived SST. Despite the importance of harmonizing complementary data from different sources, there is inadequate understanding of the consistency among the main datasets used and the predictions made using them. Understanding the consistency among the different SST data applied to coral reefs may facilitate monitoring and understanding global warming's impact on coral reefs. Four types of SST data across the Indo-Pacific region will be compared to assess their differences and ability to predict historical coral bleaching events.

Novel approaches will be developed for extracting SST values from coral core proxy data in pre-satellite era. The calibration of coral core proxies to temperature values involves uncertainties, in which this study aims to minimize with the use of statistical methods, which will allow testing of models that optimize the calibration of coral core proxy into absolute temperature values. As coral core proxies are the only datasets that require calibration into SST values, it is crucial to optimize this step prior to harmonizing the four datasets.

By harmonizing these four data sources to create indices for coral bleaching, this study reduces uncertainties and creates a better understanding and a more robust prediction of coral and its surrounding ecosystem's response to thermal stress. Known historical coral bleaching events and current events observed from the field can be compared to the model created from harmonization of the four datasets. Subsequently, the impact to coral ecosystems in each