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Corals and Climate

July 3, 2014

Research assistant Justin Ossolinski (left) and marine chemist Konrad Hughen drill cores from a colony of the coral Porites lobata in the Federated States of Micronesia. In the foreground, sections of the core lie ready for labeling and transport to the surface. The snowy white cores, made of calcium carbonate, contain chemical clues to ocean conditions at the time they were made. Back at WHOI, Hughen and colleagues will analyze the cores to reconstruct past changes in climate in the western Pacific. This core reached 4.6 meters in length, representing more than 400 years of the coral’s growth.(Photo by Luis Lamar, AIVL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)