Pleistocene Quaternary Indonesia was Very dry Between 33,000 to 16,000 Years ago

Using sediments from a remote lake, researchers from Brown University have assembled a 60,000-year record of rainfall in central Indonesia. The analysis reveals important new details about the climate history of a region that wields a substantial influence on the global climate as a whole.

The Indonesian archipelago sits in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, an expanse of ocean that supplies a sizable fraction of the water vapor in Earth's atmosphere and plays a role in propagating El Niño cycles. Despite the region's importance in the global climate system, not much is known about its own climate history, says James Russell, associate professor of geological sciences at Brown.

"We wanted to assess long-term climate variation in the region," Russell said, "not just to assess how global climate influences Indonesia, but to see how that feeds back into the global climate system."

The data are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study found that the region's normally wet, tropical climate was interrupted by a severe dry period from around 33,000 years ago until about 16,000 years ago. That period coincides with peak of the last ice age, when glaciers covered vast swaths of the northern hemisphere. Climate models had suggested that glacial ice could shift the track of tropical monsoons, causing an Indonesian dry period. But this is the first hard data to show that was indeed the case.

It's also likely, Russell and his colleagues say, that the drying in Indonesia created a feedback loop that amplified ice age cooling.

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