The site is designed to inform scientific and general audiences about some of the important questions of modern climate variability and the uses of corals to understand past climate.
Corals enable data on surface ocean conditions to be extended back beyond the instrumental record.
This is crucial to our understanding of long term climate variability, which is helpful in determining whether modern changes are anomalous or simply part of a natural cycle. Through IYOR, ICRI is creating and strengthening public-private partnerships to address the global degradation of coral reef ecosystems. As the 1997-98 host of the ICRI Secretariat , the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has played an important role in addressing many of the research, monitoring, and management objectives set forth by this initiative. Photo by Dr. Gerard Wellington, University of Houston. Back to top of this page Coral Paleoclimatology website by Heather Benway , NOAA Office of Global Programs .