Lake Issyk-Kul, in the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan, is the second largest high-altitude lake in the world. Issyk-Kul is a closed-basin lake located high in the Tien Shan, with abundant near shore and offshore carbonate sedimentation, and a long history of large-scale lake-level change. Issyk-Kul is found at a critical site under the influence of the prevailing Westerlies, and along the PAGES-PEP II transects between the winter Siberian High Pressure Cell and the summer Southwest Indian Low. Even subtle changes in moisture and/or temperature due to climatic shifts in the position or intensity of these major atmospheric elements should be strongly recorded in lake-level changes. The fundamental goal of the Issyk-Kul Paleoclimate Project (IKPP) is to create a high-resolution multi-proxy record of lake-level change in Lake Issyk-Kul over the past 20-25 ka, and in doing so, to clarify the Late Quaternary record of climatic change in this important and relatively little-known portion of the Asian continent.
