Project Leader:
EI Collaborators:
Joerg Schaefer
Additional External Researchers:
Gary Hemming, LDEO
Locations: United States of America
Special Locations:
Mono Lake, CA
Description:
Identification of the driving mechanisms of modern climate changes and predictions of future climate rely upon continuous, global observations of primary climate parameters such as temperature and precipitation. They additionally rely on our understanding past controls on the climate system. During the last glacial period (75 - 10 ka), rapid, large-amplitude changes of air temperature recorded in Greenland ice cores (D/O events) and massive discharges of icebergs from the Canadian ice sheet (Heinrich events), have been linked to repercussions which have been documented around the world. Description of the global patterns and the teleconnections among them require many high-resolution proxy records, with precise and accurate chronologies, from representative regions of the globe. It is particularly important to document terrestrial environmental changes as this is humans' habitat. Lakes are excellent recorders of local temperature and precipitation, and development of a global network of well-dated, high-resolution records would provide key information about the natural climate system. The Mono Lake basin is rare in simultaneously recording variations in both lake level and valley glacier activity, which represent independent responses to seasonal and annual temperature and precipitation. The detection of links between the Mono Basin and published, high resolution paleoclimate records will improve our understanding of the natural climate system, while thorough comprehension of the proxies will enable their adaptation to other lake systems to produce high-resolution lacustrine records globally.
EI Unit:
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
Cross Cutting Themes:
Climate and Society
Core Disciplines:
Earth Sciences
Collaborating Institutions:
Queens College
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