Collaborative Research: Scientific Drilling in Lake Malawi, East African Rift

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This award provides support for the U.S. contribution to a highly collaborative international scientific drilling expedition to collect new data to aid in understanding Earth's climate by recovering long cores from Lake Malawi. Recovery of a long core from the southern end of the East African Rift Valley dating some 800,000 years into the Earth's past will be attempted with the use of the Global Lake Drilling 800 Drilling System (GLAD800).The key scientific goals of the proposed research are to: 1) examine the response of the tropical terrestrial African climate to changes in low-latitude insolation and high-latitude ice volume orbital forcing, 2) determine if high-frequency climate variations are superimposed on glacial-interglacial variations in the form of wet/dry climate cycles, and 3) examine how inter-annual African climate variability may have changed as a result of longer-term climate variations.If the researchers are successful, the resulting research will move the field of global change research forward by providing a high-resolution terrestrial record of tropical climate in a key climatic region. The proposed collaboration with scientific colleagues from Europe and Africa, as both intellectual and financial partners, greatly enhances the potential for success of this endeavor. The lessons learned from drilling in Lake Malawi will provide information as to the utility and practicality of using a mobile drilling system such as the GLAD800 as a tool for paleoclimatic research.