UC Irvine

The determination of past climate from annually banded corals and other integrators of marine processes was the topic of the Geological Indicators of Climate From Marine Environments (GICME) Workshop held at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass., May 25–26, 1988. This event, sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Geological Survey, was attended by 22 scientists from geological, chemical, biological, and modeling backgrounds. Their primary goal was to present state-of-the-art observations made from marine organisms (i.e., corals, mollusks) and varved sediments, which record some aspect of their environment for the past few decades or centuries. It is projected that these indicators, when used in conjunction with global oceanographic models, will be useful in decadal or interdecadal climatic predictions.