Long-term Trends of Marine Heatwaves in the Indonesian Seas

The second strand asks how the region’s heatwave record has changed over the satellite era, and how much of that change is part of a longer-term trend rather than year-to-year variability.

Trends in frequency, duration, intensity and spatial extent are estimated and compared with the background warming of the sea surface. A central question is whether marine heatwaves are simply keeping pace with a rising mean, or whether their extremes are growing faster than the mean state.

The results place recent events in a longer context and identify the sub-regions where change is most pronounced.