Ice-Age Rain Forest Found Moist, Cooler

摘要

What happens to a hot, wet tropical forest when an ice age grips the world? In the case of the Amazon rain forest, the answer is crucial to two long-running scientific debates, one in climatology and one in evolution. Climate researchers have argued for years about whether the tropics cooled a little or a lot during the height of the last ice age 18,000 years ago (Science, 17 February 1995, p. 961). Their interest is more than academic curiosity, for the answer will offer clues to the sensitivity ofEarth's climate system to the strengthening greenhouse effect.