The Coral Climate Variance (CorCliV) project will enhance our knowledge of tropical sea-surface-temperature (SST) variability at seasonal to decadal timescales by modelling the processes of coral climate proxy creation and determining their effect on the recovered signal of past SST. The project will focus on how well δ18O and Sr/Ca proxies in corals record the amplitude of SST variation at different timescales, the effect this has on calibration sensitivity, and the type and timescale of climate events we should be able to see in the coral record.Outcomes of the project will be a comprehensive proxy-system-model for coral archived geochemical climate proxies, a model of the timescale dependent reduction in climate signal amplitude in coral proxies and its effect on the SST sensitivity of calibration equations, and an assessment of the suitability of each existing coral record for climate studies on different timescales.
Key publications
Dolman, A. M., McPartland, M. Y., Felis, T., & Laepple, T. (2026). Strontium to calcium ratio and oxygen isotopic coral records can exaggerate past decadal tropical climate variability. Communications Earth & Environment, 7: 308. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03465-4
Dolman, A. M., & Laepple, T. (2025). Temperature variability on coral reefs versus gridded SST – The long and the short of it. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 26: e2025GC012351. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GC012351
Principle Investigator
