ABSTRACT
Chile is a long, narrow strip of land between the southeastern Pacific Ocean and southern Andes Cordillera. This chapter presents a long-term analysis of water stable isotope variations in precipitation across the extreme latitudinal and altitudinal gradients of Chile coupled with representative surface water, groundwater, geothermal and ice coring isotopic data. The isotopic values were obtained from the Isotopes Monitoring in Precipitation database of the Environmental Isotopes Laboratory of the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission. Chile is characterized by strong climatic gradients due to its unique geographical setting that extends over 4,000 km from around 18° S to almost 67° S. As a consequence, northern Chile is characterized by the hyper-arid Atacama Desert with very low precipitation and high temperatures extending close to the city of La Serena. Isotopic composition decreased from summer to a minimum in winter and increased again towards the spring season.
