Sea Surface Temperature Warming Rates for 58 Australian Marine Parks, 2003-2017

58 Australian Marine Parks have their sea surface temperature warming rates measured over 15 years from 2003 to 2017. The dataset is derived from monthly MODIS (Aqua) satellite images and includes annual and monthly warming rates in degrees Celsius. This research was supported by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub.

Use Cases

• Modeling climate change impacts on marine ecosystems based on warming rate trends.
• Assessing the effectiveness of marine park boundaries for climate resilience based on spatial temperature data.
• Correlating sea surface temperature changes with biodiversity shifts mentioned in the supporting research program.
• Validating regional climate models using observed satellite-derived warming rates.

Strengths

• Covers 58 distinct Australian Marine Parks, providing broad spatial coverage.
• Includes 15 years of consistent monthly data from 2003 to 2017.
• Derived from MODIS (Aqua) satellite imagery, a standardized remote sensing source.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Excludes the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Park, limiting complete national coverage.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data, supported by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub.

Collection Method

Derived from monthly MODIS (Aqua) sea surface temperature images.

Time Range

2003 to 2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 09:18:49.048513; freshness should be verified.

Geography

58 Australian Marine Parks