Evolution of disc properties and mass accretion rate during a thermal instability outburst. Top four panels: Radial profiles of gas surface density (top panel), midplane disc temperature (second panel), effective disc temperature (third panel), and disc aspect ratio (fourth panel) for five distinct time instances. Bottom panel: Mass accretion rate history onto the HMYSO during the TI outburst. The vertical dashed lines indicate the time instances for which the radial profiles with corresponding colours are shown in the top panels. The horizontal dashed line shows the value of Ṁ_th calculated with Eq. (8). The shaded area shows the non-observable part of the accretion rate variations.