Fossil Coral Study Links Climate Change to Stronger El Niño Events

A study published in the journal Science indicates that El Niño events have become stronger due to climate change. A group of primarily American researchers, including Julie Cole and Jonathan Overpeck from the University of Michigan, analyzed fossil coral skeletons from the Galapagos Islands to reconstruct sea water temperature fluctuations over the last thousand years. The researchers found that the difference between the highest and lowest water temperatures from 1990 to 2010 was over 36 percent greater than in the period before the Industrial Revolution. This difference increased by 16 percent when compared to the period between 1850 and 1990. The study concludes that this increased variability is primarily driven by a rise in exceptionally warm periods, which suggests that El Niño events are intensifying. While El Niño is a natural periodic phenomenon occurring every two to seven years that causes global weather disruptions such as floods and droughts, the researchers used climate simulations to suggest that the recent increase in intensity exceeds natural variability and the effects of volcanic eruptions. One KNMI researcher, Gerard van der Schrier, described the reconstruction as super detailed but cautioned against drawing conclusions too quickly, noting that it is not certain if coral reacted to temperature changes a thousand years ago in the same way it does today.