Evidence from mud, charcoal, and feces suggests humans arrived in East Polynesia during the driest period in 2 millennia.
proxies
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Trees Are Watching Us and Our Actions
Annual growth rings in trees tell us more than climate history; they can also document the rise and fall of human industrial activities.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Southern California Climate Change over 100,000 Years
Researchers used a sediment core from a lake in California’s San Bernardino Mountains to track the effect of climate on vegetation, fire, and erosion between about 120,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How to Read Atmospheric History Written in Flowstones
Oxygen isotope ratios in cave deposits reflect past climates, but interpreting these data is not straightforward. A new study explores what these ratios really tell us.
Posted inNews
A Dirty Truth: Humans Began Accelerating Soil Erosion 4,000 Years Ago
Recent research combining analysis of carbon dating, sediment accumulation rates, and pollen records from 632 lake beds worldwide finds deforestation tied to increased soil erosion.
Posted inNews
Looking for Prehistoric Pollen? Check the Floodplains
A new methodology calculates the soil properties most likely to preserve pollen.
Posted inNews
Antarctic Ice Cores Offer a Whiff of Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere
Bubbles of greenhouse gases trapped in ice shed new light on an important climate transition that occurred about a million years ago.
Posted inNews
Sea Caves Hold Clues to Ancient Storms
Sediments dug up from sea caves help reconstruct past climate, contributing to better storm predictions.
Posted inNews
600 Years of Grape Harvests Document 20th Century Climate Change
A 664-year record of grape harvest dates from Burgundy, France, reveals significantly warmer temperatures since 1988.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A New Proxy for Past Precipitation
Researchers used luminescence signals from marine sediment cores to bolster estimates of precipitation levels on land over the past 30,000 years.