400,000-year climate record from lake sediments

Eugene S. Takle
© 2004

Lake sediments provide a record of past climatic events by their accumulation of airborne deposits from year to year. Lake El'gygytgyn in northeastern Siberia was not covered by a glacier during the last major ice age, so its accumulations of sediment were not interrupted by multi-year ice cover as were most other Arctic Lakes (Schiermeier, 2004). So far a 16-m long core extracted from the center of the lake is estimated to give an uninterrupted climate record going back some 400,000 years.

Reference

Schiermeier, Q., 2004: Arctic lake promises hot data on past climate. Nature, 428, 684.