November 15, 2002: Volume 56, Number 10

Alumnus and Professor Donald Rodbell Publish in Nature

Chris Moy '98 and Prof. Donald Rodbell of geology are authors of a paper in the Nov. 14 issue of Nature about a study that found that El Ni­no, the tropical phenomenon that can affect weather across the entire Western hemisphere, occurs on a roughly 2,000-year cycle.

Moy, who was the lead author, studied with Rodbell as an undergraduate, doing field work in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The paper was based on Moy's graduate work at Syracuse University under Geoffrey Seltzer, another author of the paper. Moy is pursuing his Ph.D. in geology at Stanford University.

In a 1999 study published in Science, Rodbell and Seltzer reported on their discovery of the first continuous record of El Nino events dating back more than 5,000 years. The scientists used sediment samples from Lake Pallcacocha in southern Ecuador as part of a larger 1993 study of global climate change funded by the National Science Foundation. The lighter-colored bands of sediment indicated debris that would flow into the lake during the high precipitation periods characteristic of El Nino. Jeremy Newman '97 was a co-author on the Science paper.

The recent Nature article confirms the findings of the earlier study, that El Nino patterns began about 10,000 years ago and increased in frequency starting 7,000 years ago. The new study found high-frequency clusters of El Nino occurring on a 2,000-year cycle.

Publication in Nature, widely considered one of the premier international science journals, is a prized event for a scientist. It is highly unusual for someone to publish their master's thesis in the journal, as Moy has done, Rodbell notes.

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