South America is a unique place where a number of past climate archives
are ava- able from tropical to high latitude regions. It thus offers a
unique opportunity to explore past climate variability along a
latitudinal transect from the Equator to Polar regions and to study
climate teleconnections. Most climate records from tropical and
subtropical South America for the past 20,000 years have been
interpreted as local responses to shift in the mean position and
intensity of the InterTropical Conv- gence Zone due to tropical and
extratropical forcings or to changes in the South American Summer
Monsoon. Further South, the role of the Southern Hemisphere westerly
winds on global climate has been highly investigated with both paleodata
and coupled climate models. However the regional response over South
America during the last 20,000 years is much more variable from place to
place than pre- ously thought. The factors that govern the spatial
patterns of variability on millennial scale resolution are still to be
understood. The question of past natural rates and ranges of climate
conditions over South America is therefore of special relevance in this
context since today millions of people live under climates where any
changes in monsoon rainfall can lead to catastrophic consequences.