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Temperature at 2.35m, 18m and 49m depth (GBR1)

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    Note: The near-real time GBR1 and GBR4 models (including hydro, river tracer and BGC) are currently paused at December 17th 2023 due to infrastructure damage from the recent flooding events around the Daintree River region (see here). These floods have damaged the real-time river temperature and flow sensors across surrounding catchments, and Queensland government is working to recover and restore these as quickly as possible. We will provide further updates when available.


    This page shows temperature at different depths on the Great Barrier Reef based on the 1km eReefs Hydrodynamic model.

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    Temperature at different depths

    This product highlights how the temperature varies with depth. The eReefs Hydrodynamic model contains over 40 depth slices allowing us to see how the water cools with depth and how cool water is mixed by extreme events such as cyclones. Note that most of the Great Barrier Reef has a depth of less than 100 m, so as the depth is increased, less of the reef area is visible on the map.

    The shallowest depth (2.35m) represents the surface temperature in the model.

    The middle depth (18m) is useful for investigating whether corals not at the surface were also subjected to high temperature conditions during bleaching events. We can see in the March 2016 video that the high temperature conditions leading to bleaching were also persistent at this depth.

    The deeper water depth (49m) is useful for looking at the mixing effects of cyclones. Slow moving cyclones build up circular ocean currents that can mix the water down to 300 m. This can be seen with Cyclone Nathan in March 2015.

    Erratum

    From 28 Dec 2014 - 29 Dec 2014 and from 1 Dec - 10 Dec 2021, the forcing data for the GBR1 eReefs model was incorrect due to a process failure while extracting the relevant ACCESS data. This resulted in static tides and winds during this period, leading to incorrect model outputs during Dec 2014 and 2021, with some carry over error into Jan 2022. This forcing error led to a decrease in water mixing resulting in the temperature building up several degrees hotter than it should and to the flood plumes from the Fitzroy and Burnett moving in the wrong direction.

    CSIRO are correcting this problem by re-running the model from Dec 2021 for several months to replace this section of the data. This warning will be updated when this change has been made.