NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch (CRW) is a free online tool that provides a global analysis of sea surface temperature (SST) and outlooks to identify coral reefs that are at risk of bleaching. Coral reefs are very sensitive to temperature changes. When the ocean gets too warm, they begin to bleach (turn white) as the tiny creatures that live in coral reefs become stressed and leave, exposing the white skeleton.
CRW is a tremendous resource to coral reef managers, allowing them to better protect and manage the planet's aquatic resources. Coral reefs are often located in distant and remote regions, coral reef managers need satellite tools to help monitor the reefs. NCEI’s data plays a central role in supporting CRW, and the global coral reefs that this product monitors.
The CRW products use near-real-time and historical satellite SST measurements to determine the temperature threshold of coral reefs across the globe. Historical satellite measurements come from the NCEI’s Pathfinder Climate Data Record (CDR), a long term record of SST data from 1981–present. This record is an essential data input to CRW that serves as the baseline, or climatology, to measure daily differences. CRW products depend on these anomalies, or differences, to provide coral bleaching alerts.
