Posted on Jun 7, 2002

Donald T. Rodbell,
associate professor of geology, is co-author of an article
“Asynchronous Warming of the Tropics at the Last Glacial-Interglacial
Transition” in the May 31 issue of Science.
The paper presents evidence that the tropics led
the globe out of the last ice age. This is novel in that the bias
has always been that the high latitudes were the key in
forcing global climate. The data used in the study involved lake
sediment cores from Lake Titicaca and Lake Junin, many of these cores
were acquired with Union students doing summer research
fellowships. Rodbell published, with Stefan Bagnato '00 and
Jeff Nebolini '95 and others, a paper titled “A late
glacial-Holocene tephrochronology for glacial
lakes in southern Ecuador” in the May issue of
Quaternary Research. Also in that
issue, he was a co-author of “Late glacial
and Holocene deglaciation in the Cordillera
Vilcanota-Quelccaya Ice Cap region, SE Perú.”
Rodbell gave a lecture to the Department of Geosciences at the University
of Massachusetts titled “Climatic Change on
Centennial/Millennial Scales in the Tropical Andes.”