HR: 0800h
AN: PP31A-0174    [Abstracts]
TI: Extracting a climate signal from the skeletal geochemistry of the Caribbean coral Siderastrea siderea
AU: * Maupin, C R
EM: cmaupin@marine.usf.edu
AF: University of South Florida College of Marine Science, 140 7th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, United States
AU: Quinn, T M
EM: quinn@utig.ig.utexas.edu
AF: University of South Florida College of Marine Science, 140 7th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, United States
AU: Quinn, T M
EM: quinn@utig.ig.utexas.edu
AF: Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1100, Austin, TX 78712-0254, United States
AU: Halley, R B
EM: rhalley@usgs.gov
AF: U. S. Geological Survey, 600 4th Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, United States
AB: Generation of century-long, sub-annually resolved time series of climate variability from massive Atlantic corals has proven difficult for a variety of reasons. Here our objective is to first document that robust proxy climate records can be produced from the slow-growing, massive Atlantic coral Siderastrea siderea and then to generate a proxy climate time series from this heretofore underutilized massive coral. We have generated the first sub-annually (bimonthly) resolved, paired δ¹⁸O and Sr/Ca time series from the tropical western Atlantic coral, Siderastrea siderea, from Long Reef in the Dry Tortugas, Florida (~24°33'N, 82°53'W). This record contains a 20-year long calibration window (1973-1992) and a 73-year long verification window (1900-1972), which permits both the quantification of the relationship between coral δ¹⁸O-SST and Sr/Ca-SST using an augmented, 1° x 1° gridded SST record and the assessment of the stability and fidelity of these relationships. Both geochemical variables are highly correlated with the augmented instrumental SST record through both the calibration and verification period. The skill of this proxy demonstrates its potential as a continuously growing, long-lived recorder of climate variability for the tropical Atlantic and Intra-American Seas. The relatively slow extension rate of the coral (~4.5 mm yr^-1) also suggests the potential for long records of climate variability (>200 years) of the region to be extracted from even modest-sized colonies (~1 m in height).
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 3344 Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900)
DE: 4916 Corals (4220)
DE: 4954 Sea surface temperature
DE: 9325 Atlantic Ocean
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting