Amino acids in corals

Description

The skeletons of massive corals are a valuable source of information about past tropical climate, in particular as they appear to act as a bell-weather for global warming.

In 1998, an estimated 16% of the world's tropical coral were killed in the most destructive and global bleaching event documented. At the same time, tropical sea surface temperatures were the highest in the modern instrumental record. Anomalously warm sea surface temperatures again caused widespread bleaching during 2002.

We examined corals from the Great Barrier Reef (Australia) and Indonesia and fossil corals from Greece.