Sea surface temperature (SST) plays a key role in regulating ocean-atmosphere interactions and modulating climate variability (Deser et al., 2010;Folland et al., 1986). Our knowledge of the natural drivers of long-term SST changes and our ability to constrain past climate variability is often restricted by temporally short and spatially sparse instrumental and historical climate records (Gagan et al., 2000;Lough, 2010). Expanding the number of paleoclimate proxy records to increase geographical and temporal coverage of SST reconstructions will improve our understanding of future changes.Massive and long-lived scleractinian corals provide high temporal (sub-seasonal) resolution, long term climate and environmental records that have been used to reconstruct Earth's past climate on interannual to millennial timescales (e.g.,