High resolution coral record of Indo-Pacific Warm Pool climate during the penultimate deglaciation, Sumba, Indonesia

Ocean-atmosphere interactions in the tropical Indo-Pacific Warm Pool are fundamental drivers of the global meridional Hadley and zonal Walker circulations. Recent research indicates that changes in sea surface temperatures and atmospheric convection in this region play important roles in modulating global climate on interannual, decadal, millennial, and even glacial-interglacial time-scales. Knowing the natural bounds of past ocean-atmosphere variability in the Warm Pool region will enhance our ability to predict the climate in the future. Massive, long-lived corals are one of the only paleoclimate archives capable of providing high resolution records (weekly to monthly) for periods when climate boundary conditions were different from those of the present day. Here we report a 28-year-long high resolution δ18O record for a sea-level highstand during the penultimate deglaciation (140 to 130 ka) reconstructed from a massive Porites coral from the Mondu raised reefs, located southwest of Cape Laundi on the island of Sumba, eastern Indonesia. Fig.1 A 1.2 metre long fossil Porites coral core MV03-A-2c has been drilled from th