Testing coral paleothermometers (B/Ca, Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, U/Ca andδ18O) under impacts of large riverine runoff

摘要

Sea surface temperature (SST) proxies including B/Ca, Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, U/Ca andδ18O were analyzed in the skeleton of aPorites coral collected from the Zhujiang River (Pearl River) Estuary (ZRE). These geochemical proxies are influenced by river runoff and this area of the northern South China Sea is strongly affected by seasonal freshwater floods. We assessed the robustness of each SST proxy through comparison with the local instrumental SST. Coral Sr/Ca shows the highest correlation with SST variations (r2=0.59), suggesting Sr/Ca is the most robust SST proxy. In contrast, coralδ18O (r2=0.46), B/Ca (r2=0.43) and U/Ca (r2=0.41) ratios were only moderately correlated with SST variations, suggesting that they are disturbed by some other factors in addition to SST. The poor correlation (r2=0.27) between SST and Mg/Ca indicates that Mg/Ca in coral skeletons is not a simple function of SST variations. This may ultimately limit the use of Mg/Ca as a coral paleothermometer.