Abstract
I will present cave stalagmite stable oxygen isotope records (δ¹⁸O) from the Western Pacific Warm Pool, a major source of heat and water vapor to the atmosphere. Stalagmite δ¹⁸O records from Borneo and the Philippines spanning the last 15 kyrs help map the spatial extent, and offer clues about the origin of, the abrupt climate change event known as the Younger Dryas. The stalagmite records also provide insight as to how precessional insolation forcing can alter rainfall associated with the Asian monsoon. A high resolution, sub-annually resolved δ¹⁸O record for the last 450 years from Vanuatu, a location whose climate is heavily influenced by variability in the South Pacific Convergence Zone, is dominated by changes in stalagmite δ¹⁸O that are large (~1%), repetitious (~50 year periodicity), and generally abrupt (within 5-10 years). These isotopic changes imply abrupt rainfall changes of up to ~1.6m/wet season; changes that can be ~3 times larger than the shift in 1976 commonly associated with a change in phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.