Climate change

What challenges for the South?

Serge Janicot, Catherine Aubertin, Martial Bernoux, Edmond Dounias, Jean-François Guégan, Thierry Lebel, Hubert Mazurek and Benjamin Sultan (dir.)

DOI: 10.4000/books.irdeditions.34209

Publisher: IRD Éditions

Year of publication: 2015

Published on OpenEdition Books: 26 November 2020

Serie: Focus

Electronic ISBN: 9782709921732

http://books.openedition.org

Printed version

ISBN: 9782709921725

Number of pages: 272

Electronic reference

JANICOT, Serge (ed.) ; et al. Climate change: What challenges for the South? New edition [online]. Marseille: IRD Éditions, 2015 (generated 04 janvier 2021). Available on the Internet: <http://books.openedition.org/irdeditions/34209>. ISBN: 9782709921732. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/books.irdeditions.34209.

This text was automatically generated on 4 January 2021.

© IRD Éditions, 2015

Terms of use:
http://www.openedition.org/6540

The mobilisation centred on the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) is an opportunity to highlight the vulnerability of environments and populations in the South in the face of climate warming. Some tropical regions are already suffering from its effects, with heat waves in the Sahel, disturbances to monsoon systems, the melting of the Andean glaciers, threats to biodiversity, a rise in sea level and other features.

Research conducted by IRD and its partners provides key knowledge for better understanding of the complexity of these phenomena. This book is a synthesis in three parts: observing and understanding climate change, analysing its main impacts on environments and setting societies and national public policies at the heart of the climate challenge.

Focused on the capacity for resilience of populations and ecosystems in the face of trends in the climate, the book explores solutions that reconcile mitigation and adaptation in response to climate change, conservation of the environment and a reduction of inequalities. The work is both well documented and explanatory, reviewing operations and the results of research that is firmly involved and interdisciplinary, closely associating partners in the North and the South.

Serge Janicot

Serge Janicot, climatologist, UMR LOCEAN / AMMA programme.

Catherine Aubertin

Catherine Aubertin, economist, UMR PALOC.

Martial Bernoux

Martial Bernoux, agro-soil scientist, UMR Eco&Sols.

Edmond Dounias

Edmond Dounias, ethnobiologist, UMR CEFE, associate researcher at CIFOR.

Jean-François Guégan

Jean-François Guégan, health ecologist, UMR MIVEGEC.

Thierry Lebel

Thierry Lebel, hydrometeorologist, UMR LTHE.

Hubert Mazurek

Hubert Mazurek, geographer, UMR LPED.

Benjamin Sultan

Benjamin Sultan, climatologist, UMR LOCEAN.

Table of contents

Preface

Youba Sokona

Combating climate change: science in the forefront

Thierry Lebel and Jean-Paul Moatti

Introduction

Climate change, multiple issues

Part 1. Observing and understanding climate change

Observing and understanding climate change

Chapter 1. Learning about tropical climates in the past

The secrets of tropical ice

Sediment, coral and other climate records

Chapter 2. What are the signs of current climate change?

Surface warming

The retreat of the tropical glaciers

Precipitation and extreme climatic events

Warming of the oceans

The rise in ocean levels

Chapter 3. Using monitoring facilities to detect climate anomalies

Quantifying ongoing climatic and environmental changes

Calibration and validation of data sent by satellite remote sensing

Developing new probes in the tropics

Chapter 4. Using climate models to understand the climate machine

What is a climate model?

Evaluating modelling tools

Regionalise atmospheric models to reduce uncertainties?

Chapter 5. ‘Attributing’ the climate variations observed

The components of climate variations

Climatic variability in the tropics

Chapter 6. Projections: scenarios and uncertainties

Climate projection

Climate forecasting

More frequent extreme events

The 2°C threshold

Chapter 7. Greenhouse gas emissions

Localised emissions

Different sources of emission according to the country

Part 2. The impacts of climate change in the South

The impacts of climate change in the South

Chapter 8. Oceans: marine ecosystems and warming

Ocean life subjected to environmental constraints

Knock-on effects on marine biodiversity

Threats to coral ecosystems

Modelling the effects of climate change on ecosystems

The impact on fisheries and world food security

Chapter 9. Coastal and island zones: areas under anthropic pressure

The erosion and submersion of coasts

Soil salinisation: a consequence of rising sea levels?

Mangrove swamp, a vulnerable ecosystem between land and sea

The biodiversity of coral barrier reefs threatened

Chapter 10. Semi-arid zones: the Sahel is sensitive to variations in rainfall

Change in the rainfall regime in the Sahel

The ‘Sahelian paradox’: less rain, more water

Desertification or re-greening of the Sahel?

Rainfed agriculture faced with climate change

The vulnerability of rural populations

Chapter 11. Highland zones: the rapid change of Andean environments

Retreat of glaciers and water resources

High mountain biodiversity faced with climate change

Climate change and microclimates

The impacts of warming on crops in the altiplano

Chapter 12. Tropical forests and large rivers

A climate regulator in danger

Evaluating carbon sequestration in tropical forests

Climate has had effects on humid tropical forests for thousands of years

The hydrology of large rivers: more severe flooding and low water periods

Chapter 13. Urban zones: vulnerable megalopolises

An increasingly urban and coastal world

Increased vulnerability in the face of natural risks

The direct sanitary effects of emissions

Access to resources endangered

Modelling cities

Part 3. Societies and the test of climate

Societies and the test of climate

Chapter 14. International climate negotiations and their incidences

From mitigation policies to adaptation policies

Countries in the South in geopolitical negotiations

The incorporation of climate change in biodiversity conservation policies

Chapter 15. Climate change and the issues for health in the South

The countries in the South are more vulnerable to climatic dangers

The links between climate change and health, a three-stage process

What health effects are observed in countries in the South?

Health prospects in the South

Anticipating crises by adapting health systems

Chapter 16. Agricultural development measured against climate change

The sequestration of atmospheric carbon in cultivated land

The advantages of biodiversity in the face of climate uncertainty

Practices that adapt to climate variability

Technical solutions to strengthen adaptation capacity

Chapter 17. A fresh look at local knowledge

Local perception and knowledge of climate

The hybridisation of knowledge

Educational policies concerning climate change

Chapter 18. The adaptation and resilience of populations in the South

Mitigation, adaptation and resilience

Sociocultural adaptation, ecological adaptation: entwined developing processes

Migration: adaptation or crisis?

Prospects

Scientific research and climate policies

For further information

Glossary

Acronyms

Contributors, research establishments and resources

Preface

Youba Sokona

A Maasai cattle farmer in Tanzania.

It is fundamental to understand the climate system and on-going and coming changes—whatever their form—to make it possible to gauge the scale of the issues and to conceive the appropriate responses to be made in the various fields. This is the approach used in this important contribution by IRD and its partners in the South.

The tropics have been chosen as the field of investigation of this book, making it stand out by its relevance and originality. It is precisely the zone for which there is a cruel lack of information needed for gaining comprehension. The quantity of work and observations is indeed fairly limited there, as are the resources used. With the rigour and caution that are features of any scientific approach, this clear, simple and instructive publication makes it possible to understand the entire specific complexity of the climate changes in this part of the world. It also gives a glimpse of their many consequences. Such comprehension is essential for drawing up the policies and action programmes that should be implemented. The book also indicates the grey areas in which knowledge is limited, fragmentary or such as to prevent the drawing of conclusions or the taking of action.

In this remarkable work resulting from vast, fruitful cooperation and an interdisciplinary approach, the means to be developed, priority lines of work and the methodological approaches to be favoured to find appropriate, expected responses for the tropics are identified. If it is wished to keep the increase in world temperature by mid-century at less than +2°C in comparison with the pre-industrial period, this knowledge is essential for formulating and implementing appropriate climate policies. The conclusions of the last IPCC report state this clearly.

This book is an important contribution for decision makers, especially at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The conference should lead to important decisions. It will certainly be a historic turning point in negotiations on climate and on combating climate change. In the past two years, all countries—without distinction—have undertaken to describe as a prerequisite the efforts that they are planning to make in a communication entitled ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’. As they are voluntary, the contributions are guided by national priorities. They reflect the capacity of each country to take action and cover in many respects the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in New York last September. Their relevance falls within the framework of increasingly precise knowledge of the reality and scale of climatic malfunctions, their human causes and their consequences.

The work is without a doubt a major contribution to the improvement of knowledge.

Author

Youba Sokona

Vice Chairman of the IPCC

Combating climate change: science in the forefront

Thierry Lebel and Jean-Paul Moatti

International negotiations concerning the climate have never been the subject of as much media attention since the report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1991 and the drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the following year on the occasion of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Kyoto Protocol at the third Conference of the Parties (COP 3) in 1997 was the first international accord ever signed to reduce global emission of greenhouses gases (GHGs), the major cause of global warming. The failure of COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009, that should have planned the follow-up to the protocol, and the long years of fairly unfruitful negotiations that followed mean that COP 21, to be held in Paris in December, should be perceived internationally as the last-chance summit for a significant reduction of GHGs by using UN multilaterism as a basis. Such an agreement—the obtaining of which is a major issue for French diplomacy—can only result from the shared view of public opinion and world decision makers that climate warming is a great threat for the future of the planet and for more harmonious coexistence of its major civilisation zones.

Climate warming is a reality whose scale is still limited (world average + 0.85 °C since the beginning of the industrial era), but the effects are already significant in certain regions, with heat waves in the Sahel, disturbed monsoon systems, the melting of the Andean glaciers, threats to biodiversity, a rise in sea level and the formation of tropical storms in the Mediterranean. Regions in the tropics and the adjoining semi-arid zones are twice as vulnerable in this respect. On the one hand, their small inter-annual temperature variation means that they are the first to go outside their reference climatic envelope. On the other, this is where the strongest population increases are expected, whatever the demographic scenario examined. In other words, climate change will be felt more rapidly in these regions and will affect a continuously increasing proportion of the population of the world, with the obvious risk of a major increase in inequality leading to the instability of societies that will thus be even less well equipped to handle the problem.

It is not by chance if COP 21 comes at the end of 2015, a year in which the international framework of North/South relations and aid for development were redefined with the Addis Ababa International Conference on Financing for Development and the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Development Agenda. These follow the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2000-2015. The close date and the objectives set out (SDG 13 makes explicit reference to combating climate change) reflect the need for the convergence of climate-related societal issues and those related to sustainable development. These issues are addressed in this book using the results of research conducted by the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD).

The convergence defines the specific responsibilities of scientists. For climatologists, it means going beyond the climate warming stage alone and addressing in greater depth— together with physicists, chemists and biologists—the complex causal chains that link the climate and other environmental and human parameters. It leads economists, sociologists, anthropologists and medical researchers to addressing the impact of these environmental changes, which do not have solely climatic causes, on health, social balances and economic opportunities. IRD teams have a long tradition of multidisciplinary research conducted in collaboration with colleagues and institutions in developing countries. The emergence of research questions related to global changes redirects this research towards the assessment of the resilience capacity of ecosystems and the people who live from them in order to propose solutions that reconcile the mitigation of climate change and adaptation, conservation of the environment and a reduction of inequality. Above all, it calls for the emergence of new scientific fields for the study of the interactions between the environment in the broad sense and societies in the ‘Earth system’.

Progress in scientific knowledge is a typical example of what Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, described as a ‘global public good’. This term highlights the essentially universal nature of scientific results as regards both free access for all and the overall validity of the results. Science must fully assume its values of humanistic universalism in the face of the threats that climate warming holds for the future of the world and the historically unprecedented increase in inequalities in the present distribution of world wealth (between and within countries). It must help to better reconcile the agenda for combating climate change with that of sustainable development by being involved in the building of an integrated view of the interactions between environmental changes and the harmonious development of societies. It must also contribute to the use of objective facts to forge national and international policies that can respond to both the climate challenge and the building of a fairer world. This is the modest ambition of this book, aware of its limits but marked with conviction and determination.

Authors

Thierry Lebel

Director of the IRD Interdisciplinary and Intersectorial Mission

Jean-Paul Moatti

Chairman and Managing Director of IRD

Introduction

Climate change, multiple issues

Awareness of climate warming and its global consequences has not yet made it possible to reduce the effect of human activities on the climate. The failure of international policies to coordinate a reduction of greenhouse gas 1 emissions together with the observation of certain effects of warming that are faster than expected means that a shift in the direction of negotiations is necessary today.

The 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris in December 2015 should be a turning point in the political handling of the climate question. Beyond the ambitious universal and restrictive agreement that is hoped for, COP 21 will be more pragmatically the venue for a bottom-up approach to national contributions and the schedule for solutions, with each country contributing according to its means and according to the priorities in national policy with regard to the effort made to fight climate warming and its impacts. The final objective of the Convention is no longer that of spreading greenhouse gas emission reduction undertakings among states but that of incorporating the question of the climate in broader problems. This being so, the climate question is joining the sustainable development goals (SDGs) negotiated by the United Nations in 2015 and is also open to local initiatives by all stakeholders in society.

This new framing of the climate question thus requires better understanding of local greenhouse gas emission conditions in order to limit them ( mitigation ), whatever the human activities concerned. It also involves better description of the diversity of the impacts of global warming on the planet, bearing in mind that all environments and all humans are concerned, and even the regions with small emissions or those that are remote from major sources of emission. This evolution matched the scientific approach aimed an explaining how local emissions contribute to the warming of the atmosphere and how this then has different repercussions in different regions of the world. These specific effects depend on the climatic risks in the region, the degree of exposure and sensitivity of the environment to these risks. Distinction between the direct impacts of the increased concentration of greenhouse gases and other pressures related to regional and local socio-economic activities is another challenge to scientists. Finally, the responses to be provided are conditioned by the variety of local social, health, cultural and economic contexts. Such complexity requires reflection on the definition and implementation of appropriate solutions for adaptation and innovation.

Faced with such issues, interdisciplinary research must respond to three priorities: issuing the necessary alerts and monitoring climatic and environmental evolution, accompanying evolution by local innovations and recommendations concerning public policies and finally providing a critical analysis of international policies in order to render them compatible with sustainable development goals. The reality of climate warming and its repercussions is now clear but monitoring on-going changes is no less crucial. Setting up coordinated mitigation measures requires continuous monitoring accompanied by continuous information for civil society. This is aimed at sharing knowledge about the evolution and scale of changes with the largest possible number of people and reducing the zones that lack clarity in order to better quantify and anticipate the environmental and societal risks to come. This approach is based in particular on the strengthening of socio-environmental monitoring facilities and the improvement of integrated modelling tools.

In the field, research must bring the question of climate change out of isolation by giving it social, economic and geopolitical dimensions and enabling better hinging of practices and means of action. This approach is more closely integrated than ever and must make it possible to link the diversity of environmental and societal dynamics and assess the degree of resilience of ecosystems and populations. By better taking local practices into account, the approach should also make it possible to devise solutions that reconcile adaptation to climate change, conservation of the environment and the enhancement of sustainable human development.

For IRD, the mobilisation centred on COP 21 in France is an opportunity to take a long look at the research related to climate change conducted with its partners in the North and the South. In this book, the institute wishes to promote its most recent research results, highlight the specific features of environments and populations in the South and justify its engagement in a resolutely involved research approach. The linear structure running through the three parts results from a wish to make this complex reality more accessible, but the work is firmly founded on an ‘integrated’ scientific approach to the climate question in the South.

The first part, entitled ‘Observing and understanding climate change’, is aimed principally at repositioning global climate warming with human causes in the perspective of the natural climate changes observed over long periods in tropical environments. Their exceptional nature is demonstrated. But the scientific approach is also highlighted—the rigour and caution required for pinpointing the causes of a variation or an extreme event observed at the local or possibly regional scale. Indeed, even if the reality of global climate warming has been shown, it is primordial not to wrongly hold it responsible for all the changes observed. Such errors could lead to ineffective or possibly counter-productive adaptation policies. In order to be pertinent, the approach must be based on observation networks adapted to the critical spatial and temporal scales for the continuous monitoring, detection and precise description of possible anomalies in the evolution of the climate and the environment. It must also benefit from high-performance modelling tools to determine the mechanisms involved and to identify the factors causing the anomalies. The reliability of these models also determines the confidence that can be awarded to the climatic scenarios compiled for the coming decades.

The second part, ‘The impacts of climate change in the South’, addresses socio-environmental repercussions by major type of ecological environment in order to show the complexity of the processes involved and the large number of determinants. Oceans, coastal and island zones, semi-arid zones, highland zones, humid zones and forests and large cities are all environments threatened by climate change. However, the risks are expressed in distinct ways as each environment is subjected to specific climate threats with variable amplitudes (cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves, rise in sea level, etc.). Furthermore, climate change is just one factor among other changes (deforestation, population growth, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, etc.) that can have drastic short-term effects on ecosystems and resources that sometimes outweigh climate change. It is then very difficult to discern the respective influences. Each environment also features vulnerability to a particular climate risk that is often aggravated in southern countries for reasons of poverty, inequality, poor governance and limited means for control. This means that the risks caused by climate warming take very different forms according to the environments concerned. This justifies the regional approach used in the second part of the book.

The third part, ‘Societies and the test of climate’, puts political and social reality at the centre of preoccupations concerning the climate. The initial framing of the climate question by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992) as a planetary pollution problem did not allow, in particular, the mobilisation of societies and the world economy in a search for solutions to reduce the influence of human activities on the climate. Critical analysis of international negotiations on climate makes it possible to question this framing of the climate question. Beyond the climatic dimension, international climate policies are studied as a process of construction of global environmental governance affecting national environmental policies.

The expected consequences of climate change in questions of health call for a strong international public health policy that would enhance the resilience of societies in the South with regard to the new health risks and improve their wellbeing. Health research must also use long-term studies of populations performed by monitoring facilities devoted to the environment, demography, farming and farming processes and also the socio-economic evolution of societies. Even when changes are extreme and have immediate health repercussions, monitoring facilities must analyse and monitor them over long periods of time. This long-term analysis will lead to adaptation scenarios that fully take into account the health and well-being of populations.

The capacity of populations to face climate change issues does not depend only on the desire of decision makers to mitigate its effects: populations in the South have not waited for decisions by experts to adapt their strategies and behaviour to environmental changes. Indeed, mobilising populations requires an effort to understand the diversity of sensitivity and ecological practices. The question for scientists and politicians is therefore that of drawing inspiration from cultural experience of climate change in order to better design the actions to be undertaken. The numerous studies mentioned in Part 3 illustrate the adaptation capacity of rural populations in the South that are in close interaction with their environment. This applies in particular to their farming practices and management of resources. Using examples of recent programmes implemented in the South, the last part of the book thus shows the major role of men and women and of social and political aspects in the face of the climate challenge.

Notes

1 Greyed words are listed in the Glossary, p. 253.

Part 1. Observing and understanding climate change

Observing and understanding climate change

A GREATICE team on a glacier of the Antisana volcano (5,700 m).

© IRD/B. Francou

Emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from human activities have increased since the beginning of the industrial era to the extent of having a significant impact on the increase in mean global temperature and, more generally, on the evolution of the climate. The influence of these emissions on the climate has been identified increasingly clearly in the successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 to evaluate scientific information on climate change. Climate projections for the coming decades confirm the present heating pattern whose scale will depend on future greenhouse gas emissions. The scientific community considers that we are thus entering a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which the influence of man on the global system is predominant. Although its chronology has not been determined definitively, the Anthropocene is taking the global climate system out of the Holocene, the geological period that encompasses the last 10,000 years.

Human activities are thus adding an anthropic marker to the main geological eras. At this time scale, past evolution of the climate features alternate glacial periods and hot and humid or more temperate periods (interglacial periods). These glacial transitions are caused by the redistribution of the solar energy received by the earth as a result of the slow changes in the parameters of the earth’s orbit. Its eccentricity varies in two periods: 400,000 and 100,000 years. Its obliquity varies about every 40,000 years and, finally, the precession of the equinoxes varies in a cycle lasting some 22,000 years. On a more short-term basis, volcanic activity also has an impact on climate by dust emission that reduces solar radiation for several years. These natural forcings determine most of the variability of the climate. Their effects are in turn amplified or reduced by internal retroactions in the atmosphere-ocean-continental surface system. The natural greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is an example of retroaction (in contrast with the additional greenhouse effect resulting from anthropic emissions) caused mainly by atmospheric water vapour. It is estimated that without an atmosphere, the average temperature at the surface of the earth would be -18°C and not +15°C as is observed.

Finally, the atmosphere-ocean-continental surface system also has its own natural variability. This ‘internal’ climatic variability is seen at different time scales ranging from seasonal, such as monsoons, to pluriannual, such as for example the El Niño and La Niña phenomena. These climatic variability modes have a strong impact in the tropical zone. Furthermore, certain physical processes between the surface and the atmosphere or within the atmosphere have strong amplification or reduction effects on the internal variability of the climate system. Internal variability can thus modulate or even replace the effects of anthropic forcing.

In this context, one of the difficulties is that of knowing how to ‘attribute’ the cause of climate change observed at a regional or local scale—whether to natural forcings, the natural internal variability of the climate or anthropic impact. Climate scientists use the notion of ‘time of emergence’, that is to say the time required, depending on the region and the climatic variable considered (temperature, precipitation, etc.), for the signal of the forcing of the anthropic greenhouse effect to exceed the ‘noise’ of internal climate variability. In terms of temperature for example, this emergence is fastest in the tropics as internal temperature variation is smaller than elsewhere. This question of attribution is all the more complex as anthropic activity is expressed by other environmental changes such as land use (deforestation, agriculture) that can cause local climate modifications.

The first part of this book illustrates research aimed at understanding present climate change. Paleoclimatology sets this change in a much longer climate context in order to evaluate amplitude and rapidity. Monitoring the ongoing evolution of climate and interpreting the changes observed and determining the probable cause/s require the use of long-term multidisciplinary observation networks and also modelling facilities that represent the complexity of the processes and physical mechanisms involved. It is thus possible to identify the various spatial and time scales and better understand the functioning of the climate and environmental system of the world. Observation networks and models are also essential for evaluating the confidence and uncertainty level of climate projections.

At IRD, this research is strongly focused on the tropical regions; these have their own dynamics of response to natural and anthropic climate forcings. The tropics also affect the various global climatic variations. The classic example is the El Niño phenomenon that starts in the tropical Pacific and is the main mode of climate variability at the global level. Stress is laid in the first part of the book on the importance of the research conducted in the tropics for understanding climate change. The most recent advances are described, accompanied by coverage of the limits of the models and information about the main issues of climate research sciences it possible to interpret present regional climate variations and also climate change at the global level.

Chapter 1. Learning about tropical climates in the past

Drilling camp at the summit of Monte Valentin (3,900 m), Chile.
Glacier core drilling in the Andes provides access to more than 20,000 years of climate records.

Knowledge of past trends is essential for understanding the present climate. Thus paleoclimatology gives a picture of the natural variability of the climate and puts into perspective the variations observed today. It also gives better understanding of the mechanics of climate and especially the dynamics of tropical climates. The water cycle in these regions is different to that of temperate latitudes as evapotranspiration is much greater and tropical convection plays a major role in the water balance and that of terrestrial energy. The study of climate variability over a long period also gives better knowledge of seasonal and interannual climate variation, such as monsoons and the El Niño phenomenon that strongly affect the tropics.

This study of past climates is based on the many traces left at the surface of the earth. Glacier ice core samples, sea and lake sediment, stalactites and stalagmites in caves, coral, etc. all form natural climate records. Subjecting them to physical, chemical and biological analysis makes it possible to reconstruct and quantify past climate changes as long as these records can be dated reliably.

Figure 1. The main components of the climate system and their response times.

The numerous interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere, etc. play a determinant role in the evolution of the climate and take place at scales ranging from a day to tens of thousands of years. Paleoclimatology makes it possible in particular to study slow interactions.

Source: Joussaume, 1999.

The secrets of tropical ice

Ice in Greenland and the Antarctic has made it possible for about 50 years to reconstruct the climatic and environmental variations during the last glacial-interglacial climate cycles. The rich results drawn from polar ice encouraged several international research teams to extract glacial ice cores in other cold parts of the world. IRD and its partners started to study the tropical and subtropical glaciers in the Andes (Sajama and Illimani in Bolivia, Chimborazo in Ecuador, Coropuna in Peru, San Valentin in Chile) in the 1990s.

Andean ice cores gave information about the pattern of the tropical climate in the southern hemisphere over periods going back as far as 25,000 years for the oldest ice. They also enabled better understanding of regional climatic phenomena such as the South American monsoon system.

The GREATICE Laboratory team at work on the glaciers of Antisana volcano (5,700 m) in Ecuador.

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