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Med Archives

 

Img23 March

The first in a series of documentaries published in the Coastal Studies journal in 2008, Med Archives describes the research activity carried out by a group of paleoclimatologists, led by the Global Climate Change and Coastal Studies Unit of ISPRA. For the first time the geochemical experiences gained by studying the coral reefs of tropical seas corals was applied to the Mediterranean Sea.
As a matter of a fact, corals are surprisingly accurate thermometers: the relationship between chemical elements that form the skeleton are often not random, but reflect the sea temperature during the growth. Year by year new bands are added to the skeleton of the coral, covering several centuries of history as in Porites, typical of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean.
ISPRA's documentary shows how it was possible to calibrate thermodynamic curves capable of correlating some relationships between trace elements analyzed in the coral skeleton (typically Sr / Ca, B / Ca, Mg / Ca, Li / Ca) with water temperatures, getting a new and amazing climate record: the madreporario Cladocora caespitosa.

 

Documentary