A new study suggests ice recovered from high tropical mountains can reveal key insights about Earth’s past climate changes.  

Led by scientists at The Ohio State University, the study showed that oxygen-stable isotope records stored in tropical mountain glacier ice cores can be used to provide scientists with a distinct paleoclimate history of the planet’s middle and upper troposphere. By combining ice core proxy records, paleoclimate simulations and modern satellite measurements and comparing the results to those from previous climate models, they found that the temperature in this region of the atmosphere cooled by 7.35 degrees Celsius during the Earth’s glacial period, which for many researchers illuminates new theories about climate dynamics throughout the ages.