A Coral-based Reconstruction and Analysis of Subdecadal- to Multidecadal-scale Climate Variability in the Cuban Sector of the Tropical North Atlantic/Caribbean Sea

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The PIs will drill coral cores off the coast of Cuba to construct paleoclimate records (d18O, Sr/Ca, radiocarbon). With these records they will address questions related to the nature of climate variability in the region over the past 200 year, and its impact on extra-tropical North Atlantic and North America. With the availability of decadal scale instrumental sea surface temperature records that can be used to calibrate recent coral measurements, the record of natural climatic variability can be effectively extended in to the past. The project will also contain a modeling component to more quantitatively assess paleoclimatic reconstructions. Two specific objectives are included: 1) Paleoclimatology and paleotempestology links between climate in the Caribbean/ Tropical Atlantic and continental North America; and 2) Variability in the contribution of South Equatorial Atlantic and North Subtropical Atlantic surface waters, which together determine the density properties of the Florida Current.