A coral perspective on last interglacial tropical Atlantic temperature and hydroclimate variability

Abstract

The warming envisaged by future climate change scenarios contains a natural climate variability component that must be disentangled from the contribution of anthropogenic sources. High resolution records are also required in order to document societally relevant climate events, such as hurricanes, droughts and other climate phenomena that occur on sub-seasonal to multi-decadal time-scales. Large, long lived, Diploria Strigosa corals offer such records through the geochemical and isotopic records, reflective of the shallow seawaters they inhabit, found within their annually banded aragonitic skeletons. D. Strigosa colonies that grew during the last interglacial (LIG, MIS 5e, 127-117 ka) were obtained form the uplifted fossil reef terraces of the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire (Caribbean Netherlands). This thesis discusses the background and techniques used to successfully obtain and interpret palaeoclimate records from this delicate coral material. Results are presented in three manuscripts that explore distinct aspects of monthly resolved coral Sr/Ca and A 18O records and provide insights into LIG tropical Atlantic climate variability.