Paleotemperatures from deep-sea corals: scale effects

Abstract

Like other biogenic carbonate that can be dated, aragonite skeleton of deep-sea corals is a potential archive of oceanographic changes over time. Stable isotope analysis is commonly used in paleoceanographic reconstruction of past seawater temperatures, however, offset from isotopic equilibrium as well as recent observations about isotope distribution with the micro-structure of deep-water corals implies non direct paleoclimate reconstructions. Here we test the influence of the sampling scale on oceanographic interpretations.