Scientists pull a record 700,000 years of tropical climate change from Andean lake bottoms
When Mark Abbott and his team pulled a 300-foot-long mud core from the bottom of a high lake in the Peruvian Andes, he hoped it could provide a glimpse into the last 160,000 years of climate change. Instead, the researchers revealed July 13 in the journal Nature, that the lake floor recorded glacier tides for more than 700,000 years – the longest glacier record for the tropics, and among the longest historical climate records, full point. In the lake’s mud, a multi-agency team found clues about how climate change could shape the modern world. “This is unlike anything we’ve had before,” said Abbott, a professor of geology and environmental sciences at the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. “We now have a land-based record of glaciation from the tropics that is in many ways the same as our record from polar ice caps and from the oceans, and it’s really lacking.” Researchers have known for decad...