Coral archives reveal a shift in El Niño strength

The El Niño underway in the Pacific Ocean has been called extraordinary, supersized and likely record-breaking. And while El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon, its warming effects are being boosted by climate change. Julia Cole, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Michigan, recently used corals growing around the Galapagos Islands to create a local temperature record of the ocean going back 1,000 years to add to what they've learned from similar studies elsewhere in the Pacific. She said the temperature record in this area of the East Pacific indicates that the El Niños from the last 40 to 50 years are unlike anything the area experienced in the last millennium. Her study was published in the journal Science.