The relentless march of mass coral bleaching: a global perspective of changing heat stress

Abstract

The global coral bleaching event of 2014–2017 resulted from the latest in a series of heat stress events that have increased in intensity. We assessed global- and basin-scale variations in sea surface temperature-based heat stress products for 1985–2017 to provide the context for how heat stress during 2014–2017 compared with the past 3 decades. Previously, undefined “Heat Stress Year” periods (used to describe interannual variation in heat stress) were identified for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, in which heat stress peaks during or shortly after the boreal and austral summers, respectively. The proportion of reef pixels experiencing bleaching-level heat stress increased through the record, accelerating during the last decade. This increase in accumulated heat stress at a bleaching level is a result of longer stress events rather than an increase in the peak stress intensity. Thresholds of heat stress extent for the three tropical ocean basins were established to designate “global” events, and a Global Bleaching Index was defined that relates heat stress extent to that observed in 1998. Notably, during the 2014–2017 global bleaching event, more than three times as many reefs were exposed to bleaching-level heat stress as in the 1998 global bleaching.