Climate and Environmental Change in the Gulf of America and Caribbean

USGS scientists use coral reefs as archives for reconstructing climate change during the Holocene (past 10,000 years). Coral reefs provide proxy information about rates of sea level change in the past, and individual coral colonies can be used to reconstruct the annual cycle of temperature and salinity variations for up to three centuries.

Instrumental measurements of climate variables (e.g., precipitation, temperature, ocean circulation, etc.) are only available over the past century or less. In order to quantify the rate and magnitude of natural climate variability going back in time beyond the 20th century, scientists rely on paleoclimate reconstructions.

A sediment trap time series in the northern Gulf of America is used to better assess the control of environmental variables (e.g., temperature and salinity) on the flux of both microfossils and molecular fossils to the sediments. The information gained from sediment trap studies is used to develop better proxy-based estimates of past oceanographic conditions from analyses of microfossils and...