Donald T. Rodbell, a Union College geology professor is
co-author of a study, published this week in Nature, 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.
Chris Moy, a 1998 Union graduate
who was a student of Rodbell's, was the paper's lead
author. Other co-authors were Geoffrey Seltzer of Syracuse
University and David Anderson of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, both of whom have been
long-time collaborators with Rodbell on a series of studies on global climate
change. They have done extensive field work in the Andes
Mountains of Peru
and Ecuador,
funded with grants from the National Science Foundation.
The paper was based on Moy's graduate work at Syracuse
with Seltzer. 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. The lighter-colored
bands of sediment indicated debris that would flow into the lake during the
high precipitation periods characteristic of El Nino.
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.