Experiment Degree Heating Week (eDHW) as a novel metric to reconcile and validate past and future global coral bleaching studies

Coral bleaching has increasingly impacted reefs worldwide over the past four decades. Despite almost 40 years of research into the mechanistic, physiological, ecological, biophysical and climatic drivers of coral bleaching, metrics to allow comparison between ecological observations and experimental simulations still do not exist. Here we describe a novel metric - experimental Degree Heating Week (eDHW) - with which to standardise the persistently variable thermal conditions employed across experimental studies of coral bleaching by modify the widely used Degree Heating Week (DHW) metric used in ecological studies to standardise cumulative heat loading.

Automated summary

Despite decades of research into coral bleaching, a standardized metric for comparing ecological observations and experimental simulations is still lacking. The introduction of the experimental Degree Heating Week (eDHW) metric aims to standardize the variable thermal conditions employed in experimental studies of coral bleaching.