Coral Collapse Millennia Ago May Preview Global Warming Impact — scientificamerican.com

About 4,100 years ago, coral reefs in Panama violently collapsed and ceased growing for the next 2,500 years. Intrigued, a Florida graduate student, her adviser and a team of researchers set out to discover why. By analyzing the chemical signatures of six coral reef cores taken from multiple sites in the Pacific Ocean around Panama, the scientists found an extreme weather event associated with what we would call La Niña today triggered the reef collapse. A series of events similar to El Niño continued to suppress the reef for the next two millenniums.

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