The ocean around the Galápagos Islands has been warming since the 1970s, according to a new analysis of the natural temperature archives stored in coral reefs.
The finding surprised the University of Arizona-led research team, because the sparse instrumental records for sea surface temperature for that part of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean did not show warming.
"People didn’t know that the Galápagos or eastern Pacific was warming. People theorized or suggested it was cooling," said lead author Gloria Jimenez, a UA doctoral candidate in geosciences.
Scientists thought strong upwelling of colder deep waters spared the region from the warming seen in other parts of the Pacific, she said.
Read more at University of Arizona
Image: Diane Thompson (left), Roberto Pépolas (center) and Alexander Tudhope (right) use a hydraulic drill to take a core from a Porites lobata coral head near Wolf Island in the Galápagos. (Credit: Jenifer Suarez, courtesy of the Cole lab.)