ENSO Drove 2500-Year Collapse of Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs

Toth, Lauren T.; Aronson, Richard B.; Vollmer, Steven V.; Hobbs, Jennifer W.; Urrego, Dunia H.; Cheng, Hai; Enochs, Ian C.; Combosch, David J.; Woesik, Robert van; Macintyre, Ian G.

doi:10.1126/science.1221168

Cited by 138 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Increased upwelling would have further stressed the corals in the Gulf of Panamá, which explains the more protracted hiatus at Contadora relative to the Gulf of Chiriquí. Contemporaneous hiatuses in Costa Rica, Australia and Japan also occurred in low-light environments, consistent with our interpretation 8 .…”

Section: Hiatussupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Upwelling would have also decreased oceanic pH and aragonite saturation state 3 , which could explain the 12% decline in B/Ca at the start of the hiatus. The onset of La Niña-like conditions triggered initial reef shutdown and enhanced ENSO variability continued to suppress reef development for the next two millennia 8 .…”

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We interpret B/Ca in the coral skeletons as an indicator of the internal saturation state of the coral. We evaluated average trends in the geochemical data from multiple individuals within 200-yr time windows against observed changes in vertical reef accretion 8 (Supplementary Methods). Analysis of an ensemble of late-twentieth-century coral fragments allowed us to quantify within-population geochemical and isotopic variability, for comparison with potential signals in the palaeo-reconstructions.…”

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Environmental shifts after ∼4,100 cal yr BP were associated with marked changes in the palaeophysiology of the corals, most notably the decline in coral productivity (δ 13 C). The inferred environmental tipping point was followed by a decline in coral growth and then whole-reef degradation 8,9 .Climatic and oceanographic variability controlled the growth of coral populations and the development of coral reefs in the tropical eastern Pacific during the Holocene. If the sublethal trend of declining coral productivity at the onset of the hiatus was an early warning sign of deteriorating ecosystem state and impending collapse 9 , then the decline of coral productivity during the late Holocene could likewise portend a reef shutdown.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climatic and biotic thresholds of coral-reef shutdown

et al. 2015

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Climate change is now the leading cause of coral-reef degradation and is altering the adaptive landscape of coral populations 1,2 . Increasing sea temperatures and declining carbonate saturation states are inhibiting short-term rates of coral calcification, carbonate precipitation and submarine cementation [3][4][5] . A critical challenge to coral-reef conservation is understanding the mechanisms by which environmental perturbations scale up to influence long-term rates of reef-framework construction and ecosystem function 6,7 . Here we reconstruct climatic and oceanographic variability using corals sampled from a 6,750-year core from Pacific Panamá. Simultaneous reconstructions of coral palaeophysiology and reef accretion allowed us to identify the climatic and biotic thresholds associated with a 2,500-year hiatus in vertical accretion beginning ∼4,100 years ago 8 . Stronger upwelling, cooler sea temperatures and greater precipitation-indicators of La Niña-like conditions-were closely associated with abrupt reef shutdown. The physiological condition of the corals deteriorated at the onset of the hiatus, corroborating theoretical predictions that the tipping points of radical ecosystem transitions should be manifested sublethally in the biotic constituents 9 . Future climate change could cause similar threshold behaviours, leading to another shutdown in reef development in the tropical eastern Pacific.Climatic and oceanographic variability have played a dominant role in the development of reefs throughout the Phanerozoic eon 10 , and the recent past is no exception. In Panamá and several other locations in the Pacific, coral reefs stopped accreting vertically for 2,500 years, beginning ∼4,100 cal yr BP (ref. 8; calibrated 14 C calendar years before 1950; Fig. 1a). Correlations with regional palaeoclimate proxies suggest that enhanced variability of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was the ultimate cause of reef shutdown in the tropical eastern Pacific 8 (TEP). Climatic shifts at that time led to environmental and cultural impacts on a global scale 11,12 .In this study we investigated the long-term impacts of environmental variability on coral physiology and reef development in the TEP to ascertain the climatic, oceanographic and biotic controls on ecosystem state in the past. We quantified the range of environmental conditions that corals experienced during the past ∼6,750 years to determine whether significant changes in climate or oceanography were associated with changes in coral physiology or reef accretion. We then evaluated the environmental and physiological thresholds that characterized the catastrophic phase shift to the hiatus.In Pacific Panamá, El Niño-like periods are characterized by a warm, dry climate and a reduction in seasonal upwelling. Those conditions are reversed during La Niña-like periods (Supplementary Discussion and Supplementary Fig. 1). Contemporary environmental variability is high at Contadora Island, a site in Pacific Panamá that is exposed to intense seasonal upwelling and ...

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Section: Hiatussupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hiatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climatic and biotic thresholds of coral-reef shutdown

et al. 2015

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Holocene variability in the intensity of wind-gap upwelling in the tropical eastern Pacific

et al. 2015

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Wind-driven upwelling in Pacific Panamá is a significant source of oceanographic variability in the tropical eastern Pacific. This upwelling system provides a critical teleconnection between the Atlantic and tropical Pacific that may impact climate variability on a global scale. Despite its importance to oceanographic circulation, ecology, and climate, little is known about the long-term stability of the Panamanian upwelling system or its interaction with climatic forcing on millennial time scales. Using a combination of radiocarbon and U-series dating of fossil corals collected in cores from five sites across Pacific Panamá, we reconstructed the local radiocarbon reservoir correction, ΔR, from~6750 cal B.P. to present. Because the ΔR of shallow-water environments is elevated by upwelling, our data set represents a millennial-scale record of spatial and temporal variability of the Panamanian upwelling system. The general oceanographic gradient from relatively strong upwelling in the Gulf of Panamá to weak-to-absent upwelling in the Gulf of Chiriquí was present throughout our record; however, the intensity of upwelling in the Gulf of Panamá varied significantly through time. Our reconstructions suggest that upwelling in the Gulf of Panamá is weak at present; however, the middle Holocene was characterized by periods of enhanced upwelling, with the most intense upwelling occurring just after of a regional shutdown in the development of reefs at~4100 cal B.P. Comparisons with regional climate proxies suggest that, whereas the Intertropical Convergence Zone is the primary control on modern upwelling in Pacific Panamá, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation drove the millennial-scale variability of upwelling during the Holocene.

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Sensitivity of carbon paleoproductivity in the Southern California Current System on different time scales for the last 2 ka

Abella-Gutiérrez

Herguera

2016

Paleoceanography

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The San Lázaro Basin (SLB) sediment record is highly sensitive to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) due to its location vertically underlying the dynamic boundary between the northern, cooler and fresher waters of the California Current System (CCS) and the southern, warmer and saltier surface waters from the subtropics and tropics. Warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the ensuing stratified surface water column favor carbonate productivity, mostly dominated by the export of coccolithophorids as observed during El Niño events, while cool SSTs and a less stratified water column favor a relatively higher export of organic carbon. Here we show how during the last two millennia, the mechanisms that drive the organic carbon and carbonate export depend on the time scale considered. The organic carbon and carbonate records show opposite trends for the past 2000 years. On multicentennial periodicities, their variability is probably a result of precessional forcing and associated decreasing Northern Hemisphere insolation, which has been shown to affect the migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the polar jet stream. On shorter time scales, interannual to centennial, the SLB records exhibit an ENSO-like variability; similarly, decadal to multidecadal variability is correlated with instrumental and reconstructed PDO records. We further show how interannual variance seems to have increased during the Little Ice Age, most likely related to large ENSO events, in contrast with an apparent reduction in this type of variability between 400 and 1350 Common Era, suggesting a changing sensitivity of the ENSO teleconnection in the southern CCS for the past two millennia. ABELLA-GUTIÉRREZ AND HERGUERA CARBON PALEOPRODUCTIVITY IN THE SOUTHERN CCS 953PUBLICATIONS Paleoceanography

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ENSO Drove 2500-Year Collapse of Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs

Cited by 138 publications

References 48 publications

Climatic and biotic thresholds of coral-reef shutdown

Climatic and biotic thresholds of coral-reef shutdown

Holocene variability in the intensity of wind-gap upwelling in the tropical eastern Pacific

Sensitivity of carbon paleoproductivity in the Southern California Current System on different time scales for the last 2 ka

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