Chris Moy '98 and Prof. Donald
Rodbell of geology are authors of a paper in the Nov. 14
issue of Nature about a study that
found that El Nino, the tropical phenomenon that can affect weather across the
entire Western hemisphere, occurs on a roughly 2,000-year cycle.
Moy, who was the lead author,
studied with Rodbell as an undergraduate, doing field work in the Andes
Mountains of Peru
and Ecuador.
The paper was based on Moy's graduate work at Syracuse
University under Geoffrey Seltzer,
another author of the paper. Moy is pursuing his Ph.D. in geology at Stanford
University.
In a 1999 study published in Science, Rodbell and Seltzer reported on
their discovery of the first continuous record of El Nino events dating back
more than 5,000 years. The scientists used sediment samples from Lake
Pallcacocha in southern Ecuador
as part of a larger 1993 study of global climate change funded by the National
Science Foundation. The lighter-colored bands of sediment indicated debris that
would flow into the lake during the high precipitation periods characteristic
of El Nino. Jeremy Newman '97 was a co-author on the Science paper.
The recent Nature article confirms the findings of the earlier study, that El
Nino patterns began about 10,000 years ago and increased in frequency starting
7,000 years ago. The new study found high-frequency clusters of El Nino
occurring on a 2,000-year cycle.
Publication in Nature, widely considered one of the
premier international science journals, is a prized event for a scientist. It
is highly unusual for someone to publish their master's thesis in the journal,
as Moy has done, Rodbell notes.