Anthropogenic climate change revealed by coral gray values in the South China Sea

The authors analyze the coral growth band from a colony in the northwestern South China Sea. The coral growth band can provide comprehensive environmental information on climate. The trend from the two-century-long annual density of the coral is in a good agreement with that of the global CO2 concentration. Both trends were small prior to the end of the 19th century; after that, trends became clear, more so from the 1960s to the 1990s (the end of the coral record). The overall coral density shows a steady d...