8,000 years of Great Barrier Reef climate history revealed

The history of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef has never been explained by a group of Australian scientists.

The team analyzed rare earth elements in drilled reef core and discovered a history of wild weather.

Dr. Salas-Saavedra said that water quality in the southern offshore Reef was affected eight thousand years ago by an intense Indian-Australian summer monsoon.

Poor water quality is a major cause of reef decline around the world.

The water quality greatly improved after 1,000 years.

We noticed water quality declined during times of El Ni and Southern Oscillation, which may have led to more La Ni in the state.

The beautiful Reef we know and love, the southern Great Barrier Reef water quality, improved as El Ni F1o-dominated weather patterns became established.

For the first time, researchers will be able to understand what water quality was like on the Great Barrier Reef.

The study provides a new and independent source of paleoclimate data, not only for the Great Barrier Reef, but potentially for reefs around the globe, according to Professor Gregory Webb.

Knowing more about how the Great Barrier Reef responded to past environmental changes is important to inform us how reefs can be better managed in the future.

We have created a toolkit to understand subtle differences in water quality, even in offshore reefs, and it can be applied over much longer time frames.

This type of analysis allows us to examine how ancient water quality may have impacted coral growth rates, overall reef growth rates, and any shifts in reef ecology at the same time.

The cores were dated and analyzed at the UQ's Radiogenicisotope Facility before they were recovered from the reefs.

The Great Barrier Reef has had rare earth elements preserved in rocks made by microbes.

The research is published in a journal.

More information: Marcos Salas-Saavedra et al, Holocene microbialite geochemistry records > 6000 years of secular influence of terrigenous flux on water quality for the southern Great Barrier Reef, Chemical Geology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2022.120871 Journal information: Chemical Geology Citation: 8,000 years of Great Barrier Reef climate history revealed (2022, May 30) retrieved 30 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-years-great-barrier-reef-climate.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.