Sr/Ca and δ18O in a fast‐growing Diploria strigosa coral: Evaluation of a new climate archive for the tropical Atlantic

Hetzinger, Steffen; Pfeiffer, Miriam; Dullo, Wolf‐Christian; Ruprecht, Eberhard; Garbe‐Schönberg, Dieter

doi:10.1029/2006gc001347

Cited by 46 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…We implement Sr/Ca palaeothermometry on precisely dated fossil specimens of D. strigosa corals that inhabited the shallow tropical waters of the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). The annually banded aragonite skeleton of D. strigosa is suitable for precision microsampling techniques (Hetzinger et al, 2006(Hetzinger et al, , 2010Giry et al, 2010Giry et al, , 2012Giry et al, , 2013Felis et al, 2015). Coral Sr/Ca variations are a well-established proxy for SST variability on seasonal (Gagan et al, 1998), interannual (Felis et al, 2009) and multidecadal time scales (Linsley et al, 2000).…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These concerns typically affect reconstructions of absolute SST on these time scales (Kilbourne et al, 2004;Asami et al, 2013;Felis et al, 2012Felis et al, , 2014. Sr/Ca variations within D. strigosa have been successfully demonstrated to replicate Caribbean instrumental temperature trends during the past century (Hetzinger et al, 2006(Hetzinger et al, , 2010, highlighting the importance of site specific modern day records for the interpretation of palaeoclimatic reconstructions. Our study benefits from being able to assess SST variability based on D. strigosa coral Sr/Ca records from Bonaire (southern Caribbean) in the context of the modern day, the midto late Holocene (Giry et al, 2012(Giry et al, , 2013 and the end of LIG (Felis et al, 2015).…”

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…X-radiography also serves to highlight regions within the coral slab to be avoided due to abnormally high or low density that likely results from diagenetic alteration. The dense theca skeletal element has been previously identified as the most suitable target source within D. strigosa for yielding Sr/Ca records (Hetzinger et al, 2006;Giry et al, 2010). Once the target theca was identified within each of the seven selected colonies, parallel sections of mixed coralline skeletal elements were screened for preservation.…”

Section: Screening For Diagenesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The average of all years on record resulted in the mean Sr/Ca seasonality value, which was then converted to SST seasonality using the seasonal Sr/Ca-SST relationship of −0.042 mmol/mol per • C for D. strigosa (Hetzinger et al, 2006). Recent studies have supported the close range of Caribbean D. strigosa monthly Sr/Ca-SST calibration slopes, reporting values of −0.040 (von Reumont et al, 2016) and −0.046 (Xu et al, 2015) mmol/mol/ • C. We employed the Hetzinger et al (2006) calibration because it derives from amongst the longest modern D. strigosa record and its use closely replicates the instrumental SST seasonality at Bonaire (ERSSTv3b; Smith et al, 2008), as demonstrated by Giry et al (2012) using three modern D. strigosa colonies.…”

Section: Microsampling Sr/ca Analysis Chronology Building and Spectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…c Coral Sr/Ca-SST seasonal relationship of −0.042 mmol/mol per • C was used (Hetzinger et al, 2006) and the ±1 standard error (s.e.) and combined error (c.e.)…”

Section: Coral 230 Th/u Datingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Brocas

Felis

Obert

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Editor: M. Frank Keywords:coral Sr/Ca the last interglacial Caribbean climate sea surface temperature seasonality quasi-biennial to decadal variability Reconstructions of last interglacial (LIG, MIS 5e, ∼127-117 ka) climate offer insights into the natural response and variability of the climate system during a period partially analogous to future climate change scenarios. We present well preserved fossil corals (Diploria strigosa) recovered from the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). These have been precisely dated by the 230 Th/Umethod to between 130 and 120 ka ago. Annual banding of the coral skeleton enabled construction of time windows of monthly resolved strontium/calcium (Sr/Ca) temperature proxy records. In conjunction with a previously published 118 ka coral record, our eight records of up to 37 years in length, cover a total of 105 years within the LIG period. From these, sea surface temperature (SST) seasonality and variability in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean is reconstructed. We detect similar to modern SST seasonality of ∼2.9 • C during the early (130 ka) and the late LIG (120-118 ka). However, within the mid-LIG, a significantly higher than modern SST seasonality of 4.9 • C (at 126 ka) and 4.1 • C (at 124 ka) is observed. These findings are supported by climate model simulations and are consistent with the evolving amplitude of orbitally induced changes in seasonality of insolation throughout the LIG, irrespective of wider climatic instabilities that characterised this period. The climate model simulations suggest that the SST seasonality changes documented in our LIG coral Sr/Ca records are representative of larger regions within the tropical North Atlantic. These simulations also suggest that the reconstructed SST seasonality increase during the mid-LIG is caused primarily by summer warming. A 124 ka old coral documents, for the first time, evidence of decadal SST variability in the tropical North Atlantic during the LIG, akin to that observed in modern instrumental records.

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Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-mail Address: Wbrocas@marumde (Wm Brocas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Screening For Diagenesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Microsampling Sr/ca Analysis Chronology Building and Spectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…c Coral Sr/Ca-SST seasonal relationship of −0.042 mmol/mol per • C was used (Hetzinger et al, 2006) and the ±1 standard error (s.e.) and combined error (c.e.)…”

Section: Coral 230 Th/u Datingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Brocas

Felis

Obert

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Impact of warming events on reef‐scale temperature variability as captured in two Little Cayman coral Sr/Ca records

Reumont

Hetzinger

Garbe‐Schönberg³

et al. 2016

Geochem Geophys Geosyst

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The rising temperature of the world's oceans is affecting coral reef ecosystems by increasing the frequency and severity of bleaching and mortality events. The susceptibility of corals to temperature stress varies on local and regional scales. Insights into potential controlling parameters are hampered by a lack of long term in situ data in most coral reef environments and sea surface temperature (SST) products often do not resolve reef-scale variations. Here we use 42 years of coral Sr/Ca data to reconstruct seasonal-to decadal-scale SST variations in two adjacent but distinct reef environments at Little Cayman, Cayman Islands. Our results indicate that two massive Diploria strigosa corals growing in the lagoon and in the fore reef responded differently to past warming events. Coral Sr/Ca data from the shallow lagoon successfully record high summer temperatures confirmed by in situ observations (>338C). Surprisingly, coral Sr/Ca from the deeper fore reef is strongly affected by thermal stress events, although seasonal temperature extremes and mean SSTs at this site are reduced compared to the lagoon. The shallow lagoon coral showed decadal variations in Sr/Ca, supposedly related to the modulation of lagoonal temperature through varying tidal water exchange, influenced by the 18.6 year lunar nodal cycle. Our results show that reef-scale SST variability can be much larger than suggested by satellite SST measurements. Thus, using coral SST proxy records from different reef zones combined with in situ observations will improve conservation programs that are developed to monitor and predict potential thermal stress on coral reefs.

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High‐resolution Sr/Ca ratios in a Porites lutea coral from Lakshadweep Archipelago, southeast Arabian Sea: An example from a region experiencing steady rise in the reef temperature

et al. 2016

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Here we present the first record of Sr/Ca variability in a massive Porites lutea coral from the Lakshadweep Archipelago, Arabian Sea. The annual mean sea surface temperature (SST) in this region and the surrounding areas has increased steadily in the recent past. During some major El Niño events, SSTs are even higher, imposing additional thermal‐stress on corals, episodically leading to coral bleaching. We infer from the coral‐Sr/Ca record (1981–2008) that during some of these events high and persistent SSTs lead to a dampening of the temperature signal in coral‐Sr/Ca, impairing the coral's ability to record full scale warming. Thus, coral‐Sr/Ca may provide a history of past El Niño Southern‐Oscillation (ENSO) induced thermal‐stress episodes, which are a recurrent feature also seen in cross‐spectral analysis between coral‐Sr/Ca and the Nino3.4 index. Despite the impact of episodical thermal‐stress during major El Niño events, our coral proxy faithfully records the seasonal monsoon‐induced summer cooling on the order of ∼2.3°C. Calibration of coral‐Sr/Ca with instrumental grid‐SST data shows significant correlation to regional SST and monsoon variability. Hence, massive Porites corals of this region are highly valuable archives for reconstructing long‐term changes in SST, strongly influenced by monsoon variability on seasonal scales. More importantly, our data show that this site with increasing SST is an ideal location for testing the future effects of the projected anthropogenic SST increase on coral reefs that are already under thermal‐stress worldwide.

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Sr/Ca and δ¹⁸O in a fast‐growing Diploria strigosa coral: Evaluation of a new climate archive for the tropical Atlantic

Cited by 46 publications

References 37 publications

Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Last interglacial temperature seasonality reconstructed from tropical Atlantic corals

Impact of warming events on reef‐scale temperature variability as captured in two Little Cayman coral Sr/Ca records

High‐resolution Sr/Ca ratios in a Porites lutea coral from Lakshadweep Archipelago, southeast Arabian Sea: An example from a region experiencing steady rise in the reef temperature

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