AusTemp: Marine Heatwave and Cold-Spell Monitoring for the Australian Coast

From January 1, 2012, this dataset provides marine heatwave and cold-spell monitoring metrics for the Australian coast, produced by the Australian Ocean Data Network. It uses satellite-derived sea surface temperature data from the MultiSensor Level 3 Super-collated and GeoPolar MultiSensor L3S products, applying thresholds from the SSTAARS daily climatology to classify events. The dataset includes categories, sea surface temperature anomalies, and Degree Heating-Days metrics.

Use Cases

• Mapping marine heatwave intensity and spatial extent based on established Hobday definitions and percentile thresholds.
• Assessing coral bleaching risk by analyzing accumulated Degree Heating-Days (DHD) metrics.
• Monitoring sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTa) for ecological impact studies on marine species.
• Identifying marine cold spells (MCS) using the 10th-percentile SSTAARS threshold for cold-stress monitoring.
• Filling spatial data gaps in temperature monitoring using the improved GeoPolar MultiSensor L3S product with Himawari-8/9 data.

Strengths

• Data begins on January 1, 2012, providing a multi-year time series for analysis.
• Uses the GeoPolar MultiSensor L3S product, which provides an additional 20% spatial data coverage on average over the previous MS L3S product.
• Applies established Hobday definitions using 90th-, 50th-, and 10th-percentile thresholds from the SSTAARS daily climatology.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic/temporal bias inherent to data_gov_au and the specific satellite products used.
• Grid cells are left blank when SST cannot be calculated due to cloud cover, indicating missing data.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Derived from operational satellite-derived, night-time-only MultiSensor Level 3 Super-collated (MS L3S) and GeoPolar MultiSensor L3S sea surface temperature products.

Time Range

From 2012-01-01 onward

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-13 21:02:07.741402; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian Coast