ZMT - Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung

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Massive scleractinian corals growing in our tropical oceans are ideal environmental and climate archives because of their ability to record changes in ocean-atmosphere interactions in its calcium carbonate skeletons. The skeletons of these corals are continuously deposited for up to hundreds of years at a single location and Dr. Wu’s research is focused on using the geochemical signatures locked inside these skeletal materials to understand climate change of the past two thousand years.

Dr. Wu and his research team have investigated the behavior of tropical climate in the Common Era over multiple timescales from the sub-seasonal to the decadal-interdecadal and centennial using corals. His research group’s use of paleoclimate and paleoceanographic proxies (physical characteristics of the past represented as direct measurements) such as stable isotopes (e.g. δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, δ¹¹B) and trace elements (e.g. Sr, Li, Mg) are common in marine biogeochemistry and enables the reconstruction of past climate from coral skeletons. Coral core samples as recorders of the environment can be of modern age existing in the anthropogenic era or fossilized specimens from the deeper geological past.

Many of the research questions central to Dr. Wu's investigations involve the large-scale changes of tropical ocean sea surface temperature (SST), salinity (SSS), evaporation-precipitation, seawater pH and carbonate chemistry, and ocean circulations. The ocean and climate change interpretations are only as accurate as the proxy and Dr. Wu also aims to improve the reproducibility and reliability of proxies’ analyses and reconstructions. Finally, understanding the changes and interactions of the ocean-atmosphere and climate systems in the past will be critical to predicting climate under future climate change scenarios.

Jump to the following Topics:

• *NEW* OASIS Project Webpage
• News of the Working Group
• Ocean Acidification
• Coral-based climate reconstructions
• Climate and the collapse of the Maya Civilization
• Study sites of the Coral Climatology Research Group
• Research approaches and methods

News

October 2020: I was interviewed for the October edition of the popular science magazine "Spektrum der Wissenschaft". Check it out here! (Behind Paywall)

July 2020: We are featured in the July edition of the University of Bremen Research Alliance IMPACT Magazine. Check it out here!

June 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic has put all lab work on hold since March, cancelled our fieldwork in April, and we're trying our best to manage.

May 2020: Thanks to the hard work of our Student Assistants, Annalise Povolo and Sahra Greve, we are excited to announce the launch of our new OASIS project webpage introducing MOPGA and OASIS to the world.

December 2019: The annual MOPGA-GRI conference this year in Cologne was a great success. It was a wonderful opportunity to exchange experiences with the other working groups after one full year of making our planet great again.

October 2019: Honoured to be a part of the Franco-German Make Our Planet Great Again (MOPGA) Research Initiative. The kick-off conference in Paris was a great opportunity to meet the other laureates and I can’t wait for exciting climate change research results in the coming years.

July 2019: Finally! We have our lab furniture installed! We placed the order in January and here we are, 6 months later, et voilà, where’s the German efficiency? Wesemann GmbH, you forgot our cupboards and shipped the wrong table. We are now officially moved in to the main ZMT building at Fahrenheitstraße 6.

June 2019: ‘Fieldwork’ at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. Taking rare coral samples from the German Democratic Republic era collection. They did things differently back in the day, “oh, we’ll just take out the whole entire reef”.

June 2019: Sophie Zweifel from the University of Edinburgh joined our research group as an ERASMUS+ Summer Intern. Welcome to ZMT, Sophie!

May 2019: Our new paper is finally published this week! “Coral carbon isotope sensitivity to growth rate and water depth with paleo-sea level implications” in Nature Communications.

April 2019: Marie Harbott and Sara Todorovic joined my research group as graduate students (PhD). Welcome to ZMT, Sara and Marie!

February 2019: After a long journey from New Caledonia with some missed flights in between, our coral core samples finally arrived in Bremen at the ZMT. Super excited to open the boxes and see them!

January 2019: Julia Michaelis has joined my research group as laboratory technician and will be managing my lab.

October 2018: First trip to DAAD Bonn to finally meet the other 12 group leaders of the Make Our Planet Great Again - German Research Initiative. We will be working hard in the next years to understand the changes taking place in our tropical oceans.

October 2018: Working Group Coral Climatology is open for business!

Current Research Topics

Make Our Planet Great Again!

OASIS

Ocean Acidification

The pumping of CO₂ into our Earth's atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution not only warms our planet due to the Greenhouse Effect but the absorption of anthropogenic atmospheric CO₂ by our oceans is also severely impacting calcifying animals living in our tropical oceans.

Coral-based climate reconstructions

Using corals as archives to document climate change: X-radiograph of coral growth revealing the density layers deposited every year similar to tree rings or ice cores.

Reconstructing sub-seasonal climate and surface ocean conditions or variations (e.g. sea surface temperature, salinity) in the tropical Indo-Pacific using coral geochemical records, also known as proxy records (e.g. stable isotopes, trace elements).

We use the proxy records from coral skeletal materials to interpret long-term deviations or changes in the Pacific Ocean such as the significant spatial and temporal evolution of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) seen here based on SST variations.

Collapse of the Classical Maya Civilization

We use precisely dated fossil coral skeleton records to interpret the changes in climate (e.g. sea surface temperature, salinity, precipitation) on the Yucatán Peninsula, which led to the prolonged droughts that possibly brought on the demise of the Maya Civilization during the Termical Classic Period (Year 750–1050 Common Era).

Study sites of the Coral Climatology Research Group

• Previous and Current locations: Palau, Clipperton Atoll, Fiji, Tonga, Rarotonga, Bonaire, Indonesia, China, New Caledonia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Fanning Island, Wallis and Futuna, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Rotuma.

• Coming Soon: Caribbean Sea.

Research Approaches and Methods

When not out in the field observing and collecting coral samples for science, our research team spends a lot of time in the chemistry laboratory preparing and analyzing the tropical coral samples for stable isotopes and trace elements as climate and environmental proxies.

We utilize the high precision Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS; Thermo Fischer Scientific MAT 253) for the analysis of the proxies, δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O.

For trace elements analyses, we utilize the Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS; Analytik Jena Q-ICP-MS) and Optical Emissions Spectrometer (ICP-OES; Spectro Cirro ICP-OES) to understand the changes of Sr/Ca, Li/Mg, B/Ca, U/Ca, Ba/Ca, and other ratios.

For coral skeletal δ¹¹B signature analysis, we require the Multi-Collector ICP-MS (Thermo Fischer Scientific Neptune Plus MC-ICP-MS).

The Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is also often utilized to examine the fine and detailed skeletal microstructures of the coral samples for chemical and biological alterations and preservation state.