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CORALS AND SCLEROSPONGES

Malo Channel, Espiritu Santo Island - Stable Isotope and Elemental Data

Map of data site

Kilbourne, K.H., T.M. Quinn, F.W. Taylor, T. Delcroix, and Y. Gouriou. 2004. El Nino-Southern Oscillation-related salinity variations recorded in the skeletal geochemistry of a Porites coral from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. Paleoceanography, Vol. 19, No. 4, PA4002

Data Coverage North: -15.7 * South: -15.7
West: 167.2 * East: 167.2
Altitude: -1 m

Start Year: 1928 AD   End Year: 1992 AD

Data:     Please Cite Data Contributors!
  west_pacific/malo-channel2004.txt

Summary:

Coral skeletal geochemistry offers the potential to reconstruct the sea surface salinity (SSS) history of the tropical oceans on seasonal to interannual and perhaps centennial timescales because of the strong link between variation in SSS and seawater d18O in tropical regions. We explore this potential using a monthly resolved, 65-year record of skeletal d18O and Sr/Ca variations in a Porites coral from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. We demonstrate that El Nino-Southern Oscillation-related climate variability strongly influences coral d18O at Santo through local salinity changes associated with the position of the South Pacific Convergence Zone and the movement of its associated salinity front. Such a demonstration provides the "ground truth" data that can be used to place paleoclimate variability estimated using existing fossil coral records from this region into a modern conceptual framework. We also evaluate different methods of combining coral d18O and Sr/Ca to reconstruct SSS and conclude that the coral d18O anomaly time series provides the best fit to recent in situ SSS data at Santo.
More Info on Corals and Sclerosponges

Parameters:

del13C; MgCa; SrCa; del18O

Complete XML Record:

noaa-coral-1925  (Last Revised: 2008-06-19 )


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