Marine Heatwaves: Definition, Severity Categories, and Event Properties

A dataset defining marine heatwaves (MHWs) based on the Hobday et al. (2016, 2018) methodology. It categorizes events by severity and defines properties like duration, intensity, and cumulative intensity. The data is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in June 2026.

Use Cases

• Identifying marine heatwave events based on the defined temperature threshold and duration criteria.
• Categorizing heatwave severity based on multiples of the temperature threshold.
• Analyzing event properties like duration, intensity, and cumulative intensity for ecological impact studies.
• Calculating annual metrics such as frequency and total marine heatwave days for trend analysis.

Strengths

• Based on a widely adopted scientific definition (Hobday et al. 2016, 2018).
• Defines specific event properties including duration, intensity, and cumulative intensity.
• Includes categories of severity for more detailed analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified; last updated 2026-06-16 20:39:53.560769.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-16 20:39:53.560769.