BERMUDA'S coral reefs are proving crucial in furthering our understanding of climate change, according to research published this month by a group of international academics.

Scientific journal Nature Geoscience has published a paper in its December issue by marine geochemist and paleoclimate specialist Dr. Nathalie Goodkin, a professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Goodkin and her colleagues spent years analysing a brain coral sample collected from the southeastern edge of our outer reefs, the Bermuda Platform, in May 2000.

Using radiography to examine the coral layer by layer, the team of scientists was able to assess the water temperature surrounding Bermuda going back as far as 219 years.

Because instrumental records of pressure and temperature in the North Atlantic extend only as far back as the mid-1800s, this new research could prove crucial in our understanding of how the earth's climate has changed between 1781 and 1999.

While scientists have long used tree rings and other "proxies" to study change in the natural environment over time, the Bermuda coral allows researchers to record variations in oceanic pressure that would otherwise remain a mystery. Much like trees, corals secrete an annual layer and live for hundreds of years, making them ideal for such an investigation.

According to a preface to this study by University of Hawaii researcher Oliver Timm, an analysis of the Bermuda coral shows that the variation between high and low pressure over the North Atlantic has been most pronounced towards the end of the 20th century, as the global temperature has significantly warmed.

Dr. Goodkin's study shows that this "pressure seesaw" controlling the climate over the Atlantic Ocean varied more than it did during the so-called Little Ice Age of the early 1800s, suggesting that climate change is a recent phenomenon, and not simply cyclical or naturally occurring.

Mr. Timm suggests that this extreme oscillation in pressure at the end of the 20th century is the result of "anthropogenic climate change" – that is, an increase in global temperature linked to human activity like pollution and travel.

This paper is not intended to be the last word in climate change research – Mr. Timm writes that Dr. Goodkin and her colleagues will continue to use "climate model simulations" like the Bermuda coral to help us understand why the earth is heating up. Dr. Goodkin calls such research "a prerequisite to mitigating the economic impact of future climate change."