Evidence of El Nino and the Indian Ocean Dipole from Sr/Ca derived SSTs for modern corals at Christmas Island, Eastern Indian Ocean

While the E1 Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been regarded as an almos t exclusively Pacific Ocean phenomenon, there is a growing amount of eviden ce that there are interannual events in other ocean basins which are possib ly related to ENSO. Here we describe results from Sr/Ca analysis of a 24 ye ar coral record from Christmas Island in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean. The Sr/Ca data was matched with blended ship and satellite data from the r egion to produce the Sr/Ca-SST calibration. There is evidence of both warm and cool SST anomalies in the Sr/Ca derived SSTs, with an extreme cooling e vent of 1994 relating to the unusual oceanographic conditions set up by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and warmer than normal SSTs corresponding with E NSO events in the Pacific.