1891/01/01 by Jessica E. Tierney, James M. Russell, Yongsong Huang +4 · 6 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Australian History and Society #Geological formations and processes #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1160485
openalex publication_date 1891/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/28
The processes that control climate in the tropics are poorly understood. We applied compound-specific hydrogen isotopes (deltaD) and the TEX(86) (tetraether index of 86 carbon atoms) temperature proxy to sediment cores from Lake Tanganyika to independently reconstruct precipitation and temperature variations during the past 60,000 years. Tanganyika temperatures follow Northern Hemisphere insolation and indicate that warming in tropical southeast Africa during the last glacial termination began to increase approximately 3000 years before atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. deltaD data show that this region experienced abrupt changes in hydrology coeval with orbital and millennial-scale events recorded in Northern Hemisphere monsoonal climate records. This implies that precipitation in tropical southeast Africa is more strongly controlled by changes in Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures and the winter Indian monsoon than by migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone.