Paleoclimate from corals

Ocean- atmosphere interactions in the tropics have farreaching conscqucnccs for climate variabi lity across the globe. The tropics drive heat transfer to the poles, and tropical inter-annual oscillations such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean dipole (IOD), via atmospheric tcleconncctions, affcct rain rail patterns and climate conditions in arcas far bcyond the tropics (Ropelewski and Halpert, 1987), causing major socioeconomic impacts. Monitoring eIT0l1s have focused on improving obscrvations and undcrstanding of tropical climate variability, with the view to refining modeling or the tropical oceans and atmosphere. Despite these efforts, most instrumcntal records span only the past few decades and do not capture the full range of tropical climate variability, limiting Ollr ability to modcl futurc changcs. Coral paleoclimatology offers the prospect to extend instrumental rccords of tropical climate variability and can provide unique insights into tropical ocean- atmosphere interactions.