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The Nature And Origin Of Decadal To Millennial Scale Climate Variability In The Southern Tropics Of South America: The Holocene Record Of Lago Umayo, Peru, Paul A. Baker, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Stephen J. Burns, Erik Ekdahl, Catherine A. Rigsby

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

This paper serves two purposes: to review current ideas about the nature and forcing of decadal to millennial scale precipitation variation in the southern tropics of South America during the late Quaternary and to present a new methodology for the reconstruction of precipitation as applied to a Holocene stable isotopic record of carbonate sediments in a tropical Andean lake, Lago Umayo, Peru. The basic thesis of the first part of the paper is that, although modern instrumental records suffice for deducing climate variability at decadal and shorter time scales, these records cannot adequately characterize the nature and forcing of lower-frequency …