A tale of two lakes: Hydroclimate variability in western Nepal over the last 2500 years
Abstract
Hydroclimate changes in the Himalaya are expected to have large impacts on social and economic development over the coming century. Here, we examine sediment cores from two lakes, Pale Daha and Jhumila Tal in western Nepal to reconstruct hydroclimate changes over the Common Era. Pale Daha is a high altitude lake (4370m) with slow sedimentation giving a continuous record of the last 2500 years while Jhumila Tal is at low elevation (890m) and has rapid deposition giving us a high resolution record of the last 600 years. Both lakes are dated using a combination of 210Pb and 14C dating and sediments are analyzed using XRF, loss on ignition, grainsize, and charcoal analysis. After comparing our records with regional tree ring, speleothem, ice core and lake records, we find that low-frequency (decade-century scale) hydroclimate variability is common to all records but individual periods of drought and pluvials are rarely shared between sites.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMPP43C1930L
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4928 Global climate models;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY