Climate variability of the tropical Andes since the late Pleistocene

Abstract. Available proxy records witnessing palaeoclimate of the tropical Andes are comparably scarce. Major implications of palaeoclimate development in the humid and arid parts of the Andes are briefly summarized. The long-term behaviour of ENSO has general significance for the climatic history of the Andes due to its impact on regional circulation patterns and precipitation regimes, therefore ENSO history derived from non-Andean palaeo-records is highlighted. Methodological constraints of the chronological precision and the palaeoclimatic interpretation of records derived from different natural archives, such as glacier sediments and ice cores, lake sediments and palaeo-wetlands, pollen profiles and tree rings are addressed and complementary results concerning former climatic conditions are discussed in terms of possible implications of former atmospheric circulation patterns and main climatic forcing factors. During the last years, increasing tree-ring information is getting available from the tropical Andes, providing high-resolution climate-sensitive records covering the past centuries for the study of climate variability.