Description
Dangerous hot-water events, called marine heatwaves, cause prolonged periods of thermal stress in the marine environment that can lead to widespread coral bleaching, harmful algal blooms, unproductive fisheries, and even economic loss. Anticipating the paths of destructive marine heatwaves remains a challenge owing to the complex spatiotemporal evolution of these events. We present a novel open source package called Ocetrac that implements morphological image processing and tracking to aid in the analysis of marine heatwave detection and movement. We discuss how this approach can be applied to monitor other extreme ocean conditions, such as deoxygenation and acidification.