Permanent El Niño during the Pliocene warm period not supported by coral evidence

Tsuyoshi Watanabe (), Atsushi Suzuki, Shoshiro Minobe, Tatsunori Kawashima, Koji Kameo, Kayo Minoshima, Yolanda M. Aguilar, Ryoji Wani, Hodaka Kawahata, Kohki Sowa, Takaya Nagai and Tomoki Kase
Additional contact information
Tsuyoshi Watanabe: Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University
Atsushi Suzuki: Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Shoshiro Minobe: Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University
Tatsunori Kawashima: Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University
Koji Kameo: Faculty of Science, Chiba University
Kayo Minoshima: Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Yolanda M. Aguilar: Petrolab, Mines and Geosciences Bureau
Ryoji Wani: Interdisciplinary Research Center, Yokohama National University
Hodaka Kawahata: Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo
Kohki Sowa: Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University
Takaya Nagai: Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University
Tomoki Kase: National Museum of Nature and Science

Nature, 2011, vol. 471, issue 7337, 209-211

Abstract: Then as now for El Niño Coarse resolution palaeoclimate proxy evidence has suggested that the Pliocene warm period (PWP) between 3 million and 5 million years ago was characterized by permanent El Niño conditions in which the equatorial Pacific was uniformly warm, instead of having the modern-day 'cold tongue' extending westward from South America. New high-resolution climate proxy data from fossil corals raise doubts over this assertion. Well-preserved PWP-era fossil corals with clear skeletal annual bands, discovered in the Philippines, show that ocean conditions in the western Pacific during the PWP were characterized by El Niño variations that are similar to those we see today.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09777 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:471:y:2011:i:7337:d:10.1038_nature09777

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09777

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().