High-resolution climatic records from corals, Kirabati, Central Pacific  

Micro-atoll corals from Kirabati, central Pacific Ocean.

 Understanding the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is crucial for the prediction of Australian drought and rainfall variability.

El Niño events have become stronger and more frequent since the mid-1970s. However, there is debate about whether strengthened El Niño is a result of global warming, or whether the 1970s intensification resulted from a decadal or longer-term cycle of ENSO variability.

This project uses fossil corals from Kiritimati Island in the tropical equatorial Pacific to reconstruct ENSO and expand our knowledge of ENSO variability.
 

Project support
 

ARC DP0664313, AINSE Award 09/021, AINSE Research Fellowship Grant, ANSTO- University of Melbourne Collaborative Research Support Scheme
 

Project team members
 

David Fink (ANSTO), Mike Gagan (Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National Univ.), John Hellstrom (School of Earth Sciences, Univ. Melbourne), Quan Hua (ANSTO), Helen McGregor (AINSE Research Fellow & School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Univ. Wollongong), Colin Woodroffe (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Univ. Wollongong) and Jian-xin Zhao (Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory, Univ. Queensland).
 

Publications related to this project
  

Woodroffe, C.D., H.V. McGregor, K. Lambeck, S.G. Smithers, and D. Fink (2012), Mid-Pacific microatolls record sea-level stability over the past 5000 yr, Geology, 40, 951-954.
McGregor, H.V., M.J. Fischer, M.K. Gagan, D. Fink, and C.D. Woodroffe (2011), Environmental control of the oxygen isotope composition of Porites coral microatolls, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 75, 3930-3944.

McGregor, H.V., J. Hellstrom, D. Fink, Q. Hua, and C.D. Woodroffe (2011), Rapid U-series dating of young fossil corals by laser ablation MC-ICPMS, Quaternary Geochronology, 6, 195-206.

Woodroffe, C.D., M.R. Beech, and M.K. Gagan (2003), Mid-late Holocene El Ninõ variability in the equatorial Pacific from coral microatolls, Geophysical Research Letters, 30, doi:10.1029/2002GL015868.
 

Abstracts related to this project
  

Glasbergen, L., H.V. McGregor, D. Zeko, H. Wong, Q. Hua, J.-x. Zhao, D. Fink, and C. Woodroffe, Coral Sr/Ca records from Kiritimati and Rambutso Island: An eastside-westside story of late-Holocene sea surface temperatures, European ISRS (International Coral Reef Society) Symposium 2010, 13-17 Dec 2010, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

McGregor, H.V., J. Hellstrom, C.D. Woodroffe, Q. Hua, D. Fink, and J.-x. Zhao, Age range-finding of Kiritimati (Christmas) Island fossil microatolls: an effective and rapid age dating method for climate and sea-level reconstruction. The Consortium for Ocean Geoscientists Meeting July, 2009, Perth, Australia.
 

McGregor, H.V., C.D. Woodroffe, and D. Fink (2007), Coral microatoll records of variability in El Niño-Southern Oscillation during the early to mid-Holocene. The 17th INQUA Congress, 28 Jul 3 Aug 2007, Cairns, Australia, Quaternary International, 277: 167-168.