Abstract
Over the last 28 years ice core records have been systematically recovered from ten high‐elevation ice fields, nine of which are located in the low latitudes. Each core has provided new information about the regional climate and environmental change, and together their records challenge existing paradigms about the Earth's climate system. When viewed collectively, these ice core histories provide compelling evidence that the growth (glaciation) and decay (deglaciation) of large ice fields in the lower latitudes are often asynchronous, both between the hemispheres and with high latitude glaciation that occurs on Milankovitch timescales. Although stable isotopic records suggest that global‐scale cooling occurred during the Last Glacial Stage (LGS), we contend that precipitation is the primary driver of glaciation in the low latitudes. This is consistent with the time‐transgressive nature of precession‐driven changes in insolation (and hence precipitation) such that glaciers advance/retreat in the tropics north of the equator while glaciers retreat/advance in the tropics south of the equator. Thus, the coeval inter‐hemispheric retreat of glaciers in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century is atypical. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.