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700,000 years of tropical Andean glaciation

Journal Article · · Nature (London)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [10];  [11];  [1];  [12];  [5];  [5];  [13] more »;  [14];  [8];  [15];  [15];  [16];  [17];  [17] « less
  1. Union College, Schenectady, NY (United States)
  2. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
  3. Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
  4. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  5. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
  6. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  7. Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña, Huaraz (Perú)
  8. Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL (United States)
  9. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Zaragoza (Spain)
  10. Union College, Schenectady, NY (United States); State Univ. of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY (United States)
  11. Union College, Schenectady, NY (United States); Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  12. Union College, Schenectady, NY (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  13. Wilkes Univ., Wilkes-Barre, PA (United States)
  14. Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL (United States); Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam, Tena (Ecuador)
  15. Univ. of Minnesota Duluth, MN (United States)
  16. Union College, Schenectady, NY (United States); Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña, Huaraz (Perú)
  17. Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam (HZP), (Germany). German Research Centre for GeoSciences
+ Show Author Affiliations
Our understanding of the climatic teleconnections that drove ice-age cycles has been limited by a paucity of well-dated tropical records of glaciation that span several glacial–interglacial intervals. Glacial deposits offer discrete snapshots of glacier extent but cannot provide the continuous records required for detailed interhemispheric comparisons. By contrast, lakes located within glaciated catchments can provide continuous archives of upstream glacial activity, but few such records extend beyond the last glacial cycle. Here a piston core from Lake Junín in the uppermost Amazon basin provides the first, to our knowledge, continuous, independently dated archive of tropical glaciation spanning 700,000 years. We find that tropical glaciers tracked changes in global ice volume and followed a clear approximately 100,000-year periodicity. An enhancement in the extent of tropical Andean glaciers relative to global ice volume occurred between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago, during sustained intervals of regionally elevated hydrologic balance that modified the regular approximately 23,000-year pacing of monsoon-driven precipitation. Millennial-scale variations in the extent of tropical Andean glaciers during the last glacial cycle were driven by variations in regional monsoon strength that were linked to temperature perturbations in Greenland ice cores; these interhemispheric connections may have existed during previous glacial cycles.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1887017
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-827874; 1043004
Journal Information:
Nature (London), Journal Name: Nature (London) Journal Issue: 7918 Vol. 607; ISSN 0028-0836
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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