William J. Skirving

TL;DR: The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat.

TL;DR: This study bridges the gap between the theory and practice of assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse, under the emerging framework for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems, by rigorously defining both the initial and collapsed states, identifying the major driver of change, and establishing quantitative collapse thresholds.

TL;DR: Comparison of satellite data against field surveys demonstrated a significant predictive relationship between accumulated heat stress (measured using NOAA Coral Reef Watch's Degree Heating Weeks) and bleaching intensity.

TL;DR: This article conducted a comprehensive global assessment of coral bleaching under climate change by adapting the NOAA Coral Reef Watch bleaching prediction method to the output of a low and high-climate sensitivity GCM.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined a wide range of satellite-derived SST variables to determine which one best correlated with the observed bleaching patterns, and found that the maximum SST occurring over any 3-day period (max3d) during the bleaching season predicted bleaching better than anomaly-based variables and that short averaging periods (3-6 days) predicted the presence/absence of bleaching with an accuracy of 732%