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Good afternoon, </div>
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Please join us for Luis Rodriguez-Marrero's Dissertation on Monday, November 2, 2026 at 10 AM in EOAS 6067. </div>
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Title: <span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quantifying changes in mean climate and its uncertainty over the Holocene in coral geochemical proxies from the central tropical Pacific</span></div>
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Name: Luis Rodriguez-Marrero</div>
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Date: November 2, 2026</div>
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Time: 10:00 AM</div>
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Room: EOAS 6067</div>
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Major Professor: Dr. Alyssa Atwood</div>
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https://fsu.zoom.us/j/93153095685</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Abstract:</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">The central tropical Pacific is a major driver of global climate variability, as exemplified by the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has far-reaching
impacts on ecosystems and billions of people around the globe. How this region may change in the future under global warming is still unknown and represents a major source of uncertainty in future climate projections. Furthermore, the short instrumental record
and scarcity of paleoclimate records from the equatorial Pacific Ocean limit our understanding of climate variability and change in this region prior to the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century. Sub-fossil corals from Kiritimati Atoll in the central equatorial Pacific
provide precisely dated and monthly resolved records of past </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">sea surface temperatures (SST) and sea surface salinity (SSS)/seawater δ¹⁸O
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">in the region. However, non-climatic processes such as diagenesis and coral vital effects introduce significant uncertainty in such records. This dissertation provides
an overview of the sources of uncertainty in coral </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">δ¹⁸O and trace element (Sr/Ca, Sr-U) records, quantifies this uncertainty, and develops a set of tools
to minimize their effects on coral-based paleoclimate reconstructions. These tools are then used to reconstruct changes in central Pacific SST and seawater δ¹⁸O over the last 7,000 years to present.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">We first present a new framework to minimize the uncertainty in mean coral δ<sup>18</sup>O records from Kiritimati using a multivariate regression model that incorporates
four commonly measured properties in coral δ<sup>18</sup>O records. We apply this model to a large ensemble of coral δ<sup>18</sup>O records from Kiritimati spanning the Holocene and find that 38% of the variance in the mean coral δ<sup>18</sup>O values is
accounted for by a combination of four </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">commonly measured indicators of diagenesis and coral physiology. Isolating and correcting for these factors reduces
the centennial scale variance in </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">mean coral δ<sup>18</sup>O values
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">by 65% and reduces the uncertainty in the Holocene trend by 18%. The revised
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">coral δ<sup>18</sup>O reconstruction is then used to infer long term changes in central equatorial Pacific SSTs and hydroclimate over the Holocene.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We then test a recent paleothermometry technique (Sr-U) against the traditional Sr/Ca paleothermometry technique in four overlapping modern corals from Kiritimati
and Jarvis Islands in the central equatorial Pacific. Our replication study indicates that the Sr-U paleothermometer does not consistently outperform Sr/Ca in estimating mean SSTs from this region. We further develop robust uncertainty estimates for mean SST
reconstructions using</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;"> the inverse prediction framework for a proxy-SST calibration</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">.
Individual Sr/Ca-derived SST reconstructions have an uncertainty of 0.7°C (1s) while Sr-U-derived SST reconstructions from Kiritimati have an uncertainty of 1.2°C (1s). We demonstrate that this uncertainty can be reduced through ensemble averaging across
multiple coral records, wherein the standard error decreases as the ensemble size increases (as </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 24px;"><img id="x_img-2e0a94d2-2add-49d7-b115-2af6c4071ded" width="11" height="28" style="width: 11px; height: 28px; max-width: 935px; min-width: auto; min-height: auto; margin: 0px;" data-outlook-trace="F:1|T:1" src="cid:2fc948df-48fb-4de7-8b0d-432a0a33da50"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">).
This ensemble averaging technique has important implications for reconstructing mean climate from the fossil coral record.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lastly, we apply these findings to an ensemble of paired coral Sr/Ca and
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">δ<sup>18</sup>O records</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> from Kiritimati to quantitatively
reconstruct changes in mean SST and seawater </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">δ<sup>18</sup>O</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> in
the central equatorial Pacific over the last 7,000 years to present. Our Sr/Ca reconstruction shows no significant SST trend over the Holocene, consistent with existing multi-proxy reconstructions and transient climate model simulations. When paired with our
coral δ¹⁸O reconstruction, the reconstructions indicate that large seawater </span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">δ<sup>18</sup>O
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">changes (0.078‰/kyr) occurred in this region over the mid- to late-Holocene, likely driven by drier conditions in the region during the mid-Holocene. These
findings are consistent with a La Niña like mean state and/or a northern/southern meridional shift of the Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">These results provide an improved set of mean climate reconstructions with associated uncertainties from the central equatorial Pacific over the Holocene. Our results
show the potential of using large ensembles of paired sub-fossil coral Sr/Ca and
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: black;">δ<sup>18</sup>O
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">records to produce climate reconstructions on long (millennial) time scales and highlight the use of replication studies over the instrumental period to
robustly quantify uncertainties in the fossil coral record. These reconstructions illuminate important new aspects of hydroclimate change over the mid-Holocene to present day in this dynamically important region of the planet.</span></p>
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Best, </div>
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Adea </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Segoe Script"; font-size: 12pt;">Adea Arrison</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Segoe Script"; font-size: 12pt;">Sr. Academic Program Specialist</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: "Segoe Script"; font-size: 12pt;">Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Science</span></p>
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