Weather records in giant clam shells

Researchers obtained daily and hourly biogeochemical records dating from January 29, 2012 to December 9, 2013 of a live giant clam (Tridacna) shell collected from the South China Sea by examining its daily growth bands and found that pulsed changes of the records matched with weather-timescale extreme events; the shell’s growth rate decreased abruptly during bouts of inclement weather, such as when a tropical cyclone passed through or approached the sampling site, suggesting that Tridacna shells could be potentially used to archive paleoweather reconstructions.

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Article #19-16784: “Extreme weather events recorded by daily to hourly resolution biogeochemical proxies of marine giant clam shells,” by Hong Yan et al.

MEDIA CONTACT: Hong Yan, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China; tel: +86-18591923680; email:

[email protected]

; Zhisheng An, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China; email:

[email protected]