Monsoon Climate and Arabian Sea Coastal Upwelling Recorded in Massive Corals from Southern Oman

Skeletal P/Ca tracks upwelling in Gulf of Panamá coral: Evidence for a new seawater phosphate proxy

“…13 C, and nutrients [Lea et al, 1989;Shen et al, 1987Shen et al, , 1992Tudhope et al, 1996]. Quantitative relationships between these proxies and surface water nutrient concentrations, with respect to both sub-surface supply and subsequent biological utilization, are too variable for these indirect proxies to provide well-constrained phosphate or nitrate concentration histories [Grottoli, 2002;Grottoli and Wellington, 1999;Shen et al, 1992;Takesue and van Geen, 2002].…”

Barium uptake into the shells of the common mussel (Mytilus edulis) and the potential for estuarine paleo-chemistry reconstruction

“…Barium / calcium ratios have been proposed as a proxy of dissolved seawater Ba/Ca in aragonitic corals (Tudhope et al, 1996;McCulloch et al, 2003;Sinclair and McCulloch, 2004), calcitic foraminifera (Lea and Boyle, 1989; and vesicomyid clam shells (Torres et al, 2001), providing information on salinity, nutrient and alkalinity distributions in past oceans. 100…”

Temporal variability in chemical cycling of the subterranean estuary and associated chemical loading to the coastal ocean

“…Many studies, however, report much greater variability in coral Ba/Ca, with large peaks in Ba/Ca attributed to a number of environmental influences on the coastal ocean, including river flow, sediment loading, upwelling and groundwater discharge, as determined by matching records of river flux, erosion or upwelling to the coral Ba/Ca record ( Table 3, e.g. Fleitmann et al, 2007;Lea et al, 1989;McCulloch et al, 2003;Sinclair, 2005;Sinclair and McCulloch, 2004;Tudhope et al, 1996). While many of these studies have similar baseline Ba/Ca values of 4-5 limol mol-1, the Ba/Ca peaks are as high as 10-20…”

“…Indeed, measurement of coral Ba/Ca has expanded coral climate proxies beyond sea surface temperature to include proxy records of river discharge (Alibert et al, 2003;Carriquiry and Horta-Puga, 2010;Fleitmann et al, 2007;Jupiter et al, 2008;Sinclair and McCulloch, 2004), river sediment transport Prouty et al, 2010), upwelling (Alibert and Kinsley, 2008; Lea et al, 1989;Montaggioni et al, 2006;Tudhope et al, 1996) and groundwater discharge (itself a precipitation proxy, Horta-Puga and Carriquiry, 2012). However, several studies report coral Ba/Ca ratios that did not vary in concert with a known driver.…”

“…However, several studies report coral Ba/Ca ratios that did not vary in concert with a known driver. For example Sinclair (2005) and Tudhope et al (1996) reported elevated coral Ba/Ca that did not correlate to known upwelling or river runoff sources. Thus some uncertainty exists regarding the use of coral Ba/Ca as an environmental proxy.…”