Coral Records Offer Clues on Whether El Niño Events Are Intensifying
Scientists are examining coral archives to determine if recent decades of frequent, extreme El Niño events reflect a new pattern driven by climate change or fall within historical norms.
Researchers are turning to corals as a natural climate archive to investigate whether El Niño events have become more frequent and intense in recent decades, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.
Records from the past few decades show El Niño occurrences that have been both frequent and often extreme, the report states. This has raised questions among scientists about whether such patterns represent a departure from historical norms or fall within the range of natural climate variability.
According to Deutsche Welle, corals can provide a clearer picture of long-term climate patterns because they grow over long periods and incorporate chemical signatures from the surrounding ocean environment into their skeletal structures. This allows scientists to reconstruct climate conditions that predate modern instrumental records, which typically only extend back a century or so.
By analyzing these coral archives, researchers aim to determine whether the frequency and intensity of El Niño events observed in recent decades are consistent with natural cycles recorded over longer timescales, or whether they indicate an intensification linked to human-driven climate change, the report notes.
El Niño is a climate pattern characterized by the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which can influence weather patterns across the globe, including rainfall, drought and storm activity in various regions.
The findings from coral-based climate reconstructions could help scientists better understand the relationship between global warming and the behavior of El Niño events, according to the report.
Sources
- Corals as climate archive: Are El Ninos intensifying? — Deutsche Welle — English
EGazette summarizes reporting from multiple sources; follow the links for the originals.
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