How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

Click to locate material archived on our website by topic


Huascaran Glacier, Peru
Reference
Thompson, L.G., Mosley-Thompson, E., Davis, M.E., Lin, P.-N., Henderson, K. and Mashiotta, T.A. 2003. Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales. Climatic Change 59: 137-155.

Description
The authors analyzed decadally-averaged δ18O records derived by them and their colleagues from three Andean and three Tibetan ice cores, demonstrating that "on centennial to millennial time scales atmospheric temperature is the principal control on the δ18Oice of the snowfall that sustains these high mountain ice fields," after which they produced "a low latitude δ18O history for the last millennium" that they use as a surrogate for air temperature. For the Huascaran Glacier (9.11°S, 77.62°W), this work suggests that the MWP was not as warm as the CWP.