A review of Brazilian scleractinian corals for paleoclimate studies

ABSTRACT Scleractinian corals are natural archives that provide geochemical information at high-resolution that can be used for reconstructing past climate variability at sub-seasonal to monthly timescales. These archives produce annual density banding, which enables the development of accurate age models. While widely applied in other tropical oceans, coral-based paleoclimate studies in the Western Tropical South Atlantic (WTSA) are scarcer, constrained by the limited availability of species, high levels of endemicity, and limited size of the corals. Recent studies have made significant advances in the field of coral paleoclimate research in the tropical South Atlantic by recovering a greater number of coral cores, both endemic and cosmopolitan species. These records have allowed researchers to reconstruct sea-surface temperature, salinity, and regional climate events using stable isotope and trace element proxies. However, to date, the scientific literature lacks a comprehensive synthesis of the coral skeletal record of the most prominent modern and fossil coral species in Brazilian reef systems, which can serve as natural archives. In this study, we present an overview of coral species occurring in the WTSA that have the potential to provide environmental information from the evaluation of their skeletons, thereby advancing future research through a critical evaluation of methodological developments in sampling, imaging, and geochemical analyses. Addressing these gaps will substantially strengthen the contribution of WTSA coral records to tropical climate reconstructions and advance our understanding of regional climate variability.