Climate change is accelerating ocean warming to levels unprecedented for most contemporary marine life. However, few studies have assessed whether population responses to temperature change follow predictions based on species’ thermal range. We modelled thermal abundance curves for 583 Australian shallow-water reef species using a global monitoring dataset to evaluate population responses across three decades (1992 – 2022) of environmental change. We found that species followed expected warming trends more closely than cooling, on average, with lags being greatest for tropical species. With cooling, population growth and loss were both slower than predicted, suggesting that recovery from heating events might take longer for populations to restabilize. These preliminary results mark important tipping points throughout species thermal range, where the rate of recovery could determine where populations will perish or persist amidst a warming ocean.