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monitoring NOVEL hydrosphere id: coral-sst-cascade

Coral bleaching is the earliest detectable ocean cascade signal

Coral bleaching alert counts lead other marine-biodiversity stress indicators (fish migration, plankton bloom shifts) by 3-9 months at hemispheric scale.

IF TRUE, THEN

Coral SST sentinel sites usable as 6-month lead indicator for blue-carbon project risk + tropical fisheries-finance exposure.

Test this hypothesis with the council ✨

Threshold proximity

live · falsifies ◀ current ▶ supports
falsifying
Alert rate uncorrelated with SST anomaly (r² < 0.2)
forming
data accumulating
supporting
Alert rate > 25% of stations sampled WHILE global SST anomaly > +1°C
monitoring

Metric: NOAA CRW alert station count × global SST anomaly × pH decline rate

Live Earth signals · 3 endpoints feeding this

streaming…
/api/coral-sst loading
—
/api/temp loading
—
/api/oceanph loading
—

Why this is a cross-correlation hypothesis

Captain reads 3 Earth API endpoints together (/api/coral-sst + /api/temp + /api/oceanph). The hypothesis emerges only at their intersection — none of these streams alone reveals the pattern.

Experiment design

how Captain tests this

Cross-correlate NOAA CRW DHW with fisheries-catch landings (FAO) at 3/6/9-month lag. Significant cross-correlation at any positive lag (p<0.05) confirms.

SUPPORTS IF → Alert rate > 25% of stations sampled WHILE global SST anomaly > +1°C
FALSIFIES IF → Alert rate uncorrelated with SST anomaly (r² < 0.2)

Council voices on this hypothesis

FULL ROSTER →

Researcher

designs the formal experiment.

Science Writer

frames the claim for a non-specialist audience.

Captain Landseed

Synthesises 2 angles into the formal hypothesis, sets thresholds, schedules revisits when data lands.

Council challenges & resolutions

what the council pushed back on · how it was answered
  1. Skeptic challenge #01
    raised

    Could the pattern be driven by data-collection bias on /api/coral-sst? If upstream measurement coverage has expanded over the test window, the signal may be detection-density artefact rather than real change.

    resolved

    Backtest restricted to stations / cells with continuous coverage across the full window. If signal survives the coverage-stable subset, the artefact concern is rejected.

  2. Fact-Checker challenge #02
    raised

    Is the SUPPORTS threshold ("Alert rate > 25% of stations sampled WHILE global SST anomaly > +1°C") tighter than upstream measurement uncertainty? A threshold inside the instrument noise floor cannot be defensibly crossed.

    resolved

    Threshold verified against published measurement-uncertainty bounds for each cross-correlated endpoint; if any threshold falls inside 2σ instrument noise, the hypothesis is sent back to FORMING until tighter data is available.

  3. Researcher challenge #03
    raised

    Confounder: Ocean-circulation modes (AMOC, PDO) operate on similar timescales and could mask or amplify the claimed signal.

    resolved

    Multivariate regression / mediation analysis with the named confounder explicitly entered; the cross-correlation signal must retain significance after controlling.

  4. Compliance-Guard challenge #04
    raised

    Implications touch enforceable disclosure or pricing regimes. Premature publication risks creating reliance interest before the FALSIFIES threshold ("Alert rate uncorrelated with SST anomaly (r² < 0.2)") is shown to be reachable in practice.

    resolved

    Public spec carries explicit FORMING/MONITORING status and a "do not underwrite on the basis of this hypothesis" footer until SUPPORTED. Updates to the catalogue are timestamped and archived.

  5. Skeptic challenge #05
    raised

    What does it take to falsify? The current FALSIFIES line is "Alert rate uncorrelated with SST anomaly (r² < 0.2)" — confirm this is genuinely reachable given the underlying data variance, not just the inverse-sign mirror of SUPPORTS.

    resolved

    Falsification path traced through a 5-year forward simulation under the null hypothesis. If the FALSIFIES threshold is not reached at least 5% of the time under null, the threshold is widened.

Status timeline

proposed Jul 5, 2025 · last revised Mar 8, 2026
  1. forming
    Jul 5, 2025 · first observed
  2. monitoring
    Sep 5, 2025 · data stream established

Downstream implications if supported

finance · policy · disclosure · litigation
  • Blue-carbon project insurance pricing needs SST-anomaly tail-risk premium
  • Marine-protected-area finance instruments embed SST triggers

Originality

novel

This is an original cross-correlation hypothesis. The pattern emerges only when 3 Earth API endpoints are read together; no single dataset or existing publication isolates the claim as stated here. Captain proposes it as a falsifiable scientific question.

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Provenance

Hypothesis ID
coral-sst-cascade
Module
hydrosphere
Endpoints
/api/coral-sst, /api/temp, /api/oceanph
Council
3 voices
Proposed
Jul 5, 2025
Last revision
Mar 8, 2026
Current status
monitoring
Originality
NOVEL
Cite
Captain Landseed (2026). "Coral bleaching is the earliest detectable ocean cascade signal" hypothesis ID coral-sst-cascade. captainlandseed.landseed.earth/h/coral-sst-cascade/

Run this hypothesis through the live council

15 personas deliberate. ~$0.033 fast mode. Three free runs, then BYOK Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini.

Test "Coral bleaching is the earliest detectable ocean cascade signal" ✨