Detecting marine heat waves on long and large datasets

Hi all,

Working on my BSc dissertation and my aim is use this function to detect marine heat waves (MHWs) in the Mediterranean seas over a 30 years time scale.

Problem is the time dimension is long, as well as the spatial dimension (as it comprehend the whole Mediterranean basin, and data are daily sst). One year of SST has a dimension of 1089 lon x 318 lat x 366 time double.

I reduced the spatial resolution by halving the spatial dimension with the resample Matlab code, but still, for a 30 yrs analysis data would be too big to work with.

Any advice on how I can further reduce the data and work with it? (I also though on dividing into regional areas and average the mean of each area but I don't know on the basis of which criteria to divide).

Any advice would be extremely helpfull! THANK YOU.

[John D'Errico]

This is what advisors are there to do. But this question is not about MATLAB.