Using oxygen isotope signatures and impurities -- such as organic matter flushed into the cave by surface rain -- trapped in the layered mineral deposits, Orland determined annual rainfall levels for the years the stalagmite was growing, from approximately 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D.
While cave formations have previously been used as climate indicators, past analyses have relied on relatively crude sampling tools, typically small dental drills, which required averaging across 10 or even 100 years at a time. The current analysis used an advanced ion microprobe in the Wisconsin Secondary-Ion Mass-Spectrometer (Wis-SIMS) laboratory to sample spots just one-hundredth of a millimeter across. That represents about 100 times sharper detail than previous methods. With such fine resolution, the scientists were able to discriminate weather patterns from individual years and seasons.
Funding for the project is from the Comer Science and Education Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Israel Science Foundation, Sigma Xi, and the UW-Madison Department of Geology and Geophysics.