ABSTRACT
Reconstructions of lake-level variations in Lake Malawi, East Africa, indicate the lake was about 200 to 300 m below present during most of the period from ~40,000 to 28,000 years before present (BP), and 100 to 150 m below present from 10,000 to 6000 years BP. These fluctuations are generally out of phase with most African lake-level records north of Malawi. General Circulation Models (GCMs) simulate such an opposite response due to the effect of insolation variations on the intensity of the northern and southern hemisphere monsoon. These results suggest that climatic gradients in this region of tropical east Africa were much larger than today during significant periods of the past.
