In the Southeast, we know that El Nino and La Nina greatly affect our climate conditions, especially in the winter months when farmers are preparing for the next growing season. One of the important questions about the changing climate is whether or not the frequency and intensity of El Nino and La Nina (collectively called El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO) are changing, because this could help us determine how Southeastern climate might change in the future. But climate models don’t do a very good job of capturing this variability. So paleoceanographers are looking for data to provide clues to how these changes might have occurred. This story in Science describes one attempt to retrieve Ice-Age corals, which capture variations in water temperature linked to ENSO. You can read it at https://www.science.org/content/article/remote-pacific-island-clues-el-ninos-future-preserved-ancient-reefs.
