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Indian seas experienced severe warming in 1998 and 2002 that resulted in large-scale bleaching and mortality of corals. Anticipating increased warming in future, we made an attempt to project coral vulnerability in the Andaman, Nicobar, Lakshadweep, the Gulf of Mannar and the Gulf of Kachchh regions for the 21st century. To project the number of bleaching events, the thermal threshold for bleaching, degree heating month (DHM) accumulations of the sea surface temperature (SST) hotspot anomalies, and the predicted increase in SST during this century were considered. The decadal DHM values are expected to gradually increase in all the five regions in the early decades of this century, but abruptly increase after the year 2050. The results indicate that if there is no increase in thermal tolerance capacity, bleaching would become an annual or biannual event for almost all reef regions along the Indian coast in …