Twentieth century warming of the tropical Atlantic captured by Sr-U paleothermometry
April 10, 2017
Coral skeletons are valuable archives of past ocean conditions. However, interpretation of coral paleotemperature records is confounded by uncertainties associated with single-element ratio thermometers, including Sr/Ca. A new approach, Sr-U, uses U/Ca to constrain the influence of Rayleigh fractionation on Sr/Ca. Here we build on the initial Pacific Porites Sr-U calibration to include multiple Atlantic and Pacific coral genera from multiple coral reef locations spanning a temperature range of 23.15–30.12°C. Accounting for the wintertime growth cessation of one Bermuda coral, we show that Sr-U is strongly correlated with the average water temperature at each location (r2 = 0.91, P
Citation Information
| Publication Year | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Title | Twentieth century warming of the tropical Atlantic captured by Sr-U paleothermometry |
| DOI | 10.1002/2016PA002976 |
| Authors | Alice Alpert, Anne Cohen, Delia Oppo, Thomas DeCarlo, Glenn Gaetani, Edwin Hernandez-Delgado, Amos Winter, Meagan Gonneea Eagle |
| Publication Type | Article |
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Series Title | Paleoceanography |
| Index ID | 70186755 |
| Record Source | USGS Publications Warehouse |
| USGS Organization | Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center |