Climate change has been implicated in the success and downfall of several ancient civilizations. Here we present a synthesis of historical, climatic, and geological evidence that supports the hypothesis that climate change may have been responsible for the slow demise of Minoan civilization. Using proxy ENSO and precipitation reconstruction data in the period 1650–1980 we present empirical and ...

Recent advances in observational and theoretical studies of El Nino have shed light on controversies concerning the possible effect of global warming on this phenomenon over the past few decades and in the future. El Nino is now understood to be one phase of a natural mode of oscillation-La Nina is the complementary phase-that results from unstable interactions between the tropical Pacific Ocea...

El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important driver of interannual variations in climate and ecosystem productivity in tropical regions. However, detailed information about this important phenomenon of the Indian Ocean is scarce. Consequently, the objective of this study is to improve understanding of the impact of warm event El Nino and cool event La Nina on annual tuna landings from th...

The size of the 300 mbar north circumpolar vortex, and its eastern, western, date line, and Greenwich hemisphere components, is estimated for the period 1963–2000 by planimetering the area poleward of 300 mbar contours in the main belt of westerlies on the mean-monthly polar stereographic analyses of the Institute of Meteorology of the Free University of Berlin. On the basis of the superposed e...

Three previously published proxy records of El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability were compared: a documentary record from coastal South America; an ice-core record from the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru; and a tree-ring record record from arid site conifers in the southwestern United States. The records were calibrated with long ENSO instrument records, and all the proxy records showed s...

Radiocarbon (14C) content of surface waters inferred from a coral record from the Galapagos Islands increased abruptly during the upwelling season (July through September) after the El Nino event of 1976. Sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) associated with the upwelling season also shifted after 1976. The synchroneity of the shift in both 14C and SST implies that the vertical thermal structure of t...