Ice core drilling has provided some of the most important paleoclimatic information for the Quaternary interval of earth history. With ice core samples it has been possible to determine the relationship between climate change and atmospheric gas composition. In some low latitude regions the accumulation rate of snow is high enough to resolve annual variations in climate and ENSO scale events. This proposal requests support to drill such an ice cap, the Guliya ice cap in China. Located on the northwestern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, it is the largest and highest subtropical ice cap in the world. Thus it is likely to contain the best, uninterrupted record of paleoclimate and atmospheric chemistry from the low latitudes. Using the ice core samples, along with others they collected from low latitude sites in China and Peru, the PIs will oversee a comprehensive analysis of past climate, and atmospheric gas and dust composition. This research is important because it will provide the first low latitude record of atmospheric gas composition and its relationship to climate change. It will also provide us with the best record of the relationship of low latitude, high elevations climate to the record of monsoon variability in southern Asia and thus provide information on the relationship between ENSO events and monsoon activity.
