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Stephans et al. 2004
Stephans, C.L., Quinn, T.M., Taylor, F.W. and Corrège, T. (2004). Assessing the reproducibility of coral-based climate records. Geophysical Research Letters 31: doi: 10.1029/2004GL020343. issn: 0094-8276.

We perform replication tests using monthly variations in Sr/Ca and δ18O in four cores from three Porites lutea coral heads from New Caledonia to assess the reproducibility of coral-based climate records. Coral Sr/Ca (δ18O) records are well correlated to each other and to the instrumental SST record (1967--1992), especially in terms of differences in the mean values of 25-year SST records (~0.2¿C, Sr/Ca-SST; 0.6¿C, δ18O-SST). The average error associated with the coral Sr/Ca-SST (δ18O-SST) of any particular month, season or year is ~0.8¿C (1.1¿C), 0.6¿C (0.8¿C) and 0.5¿C (0.6¿C), respectively. Stacking or averaging the individual proxy records reduces the error between observed and predicted SST, although the reduction is small for coral Sr/Ca. Excellent reproducibility among the coral proxies implies that reliable climate records can be generated from a single coral core and that coral Sr/Ca-SST records are not compromised, beyond the errors stated herein, by non-temperature-related biological effects.

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Abstract

Keywords
Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Paleoclimatology, Global Change, Climate dynamics, Oceanography, General, Climate and interannual variability, Oceanography, General, Paleoceanography, Oceanography, Biological and Chemical, Geochemistry
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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