Sea Surface Temperature Trends in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea

This study represents an attempt to estimate sea surface temperature (SST) trends of ten islands along the coastlines of the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Satellite-based SST data from September 1981 to December 2011 were obtained from Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature version 2 (Daily OISST v. 2) produced at NOAA-NCDC, where they were used to analyze moving histograms, coefficients of bimodality and linear regression analysis. We found that SST of all study sites had significantly increased over the past 30 years, and coefficients of bimodality showed that distribution of SST would be bimodal distribution rather than unimodal distribution. Results also showed that mass coral bleaching events in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea were likely to occur when there were sudden increases in SST over a short period or a small increase over a long period due to major El Nino or La Nina events roughly every 10 years.