Giant clam diaries fill tropical gap

Giant‑clam shells record daily and seasonal chemical layers that can be sampled to reconstruct month‑by‑month sea temperature and rainfall centuries ago. A 1785–1827 clam from the Lizard Island lagoon yields a 30‑year, subannual climate record showing summers ~0.6–0.9°C cooler than late‑20th‑century measurements. — Provides a new Southern Hemisphere tropical baseline for assessing modern warming, reef vulnerability, and claims about when and how fast industrial warming departed from natural variability.