Paleoclimatology from Coral Cores
Coral skeletons, collected on the reef by teams of SCUBA divers, are valuable archives of climatic information. They provide retrospective monitoring, through multi-century environmental reconstructions. These data can help improve our understanding of past stress events to coral reefs.
Paleoenvironmental analyses of coral cores from the Florida Keys yielded direct
measurements of:
- oxygen and carbon isotope ratios
- coral skeletal growth (extension, density, calcification)
- recostructions of reef temperatures
These reconstructions were compared with local and global temperature datasets.
Growth rates from the coral skeletons show responses to changing climatic and
environmental conditions. Paleodata provide estimates of
reef temperatures as they sample subsurface temperatures where the corals
actually live.
This work was carried out in cooperation with:
NOAA's National Climate Data Center
NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program
