Excitement about the release of an 1800 year old ice core from the Peruvian Andes, which will be used to compare with other ice cores around the world. Lonnie Thompson, who notorious for not sharing his data, which has caused some to view his work with suspicion, and Ohio State University, are involved – see http://phys.org/print284300318.html
The exciting thing about this core is that there are chemical patterns in the layers that seem to match up with ice cores in different parts of the world. The paper, in Science Express, is important, as the annual layers at Quelccaya show up very clearly. They do so in other parts of the world too but in this instance the pattern is distinct as they have light layers from the snowy wet season and dark margins from the accumulated dust from the dry seasons (summer and winter, if you like). The sequence can be easily picked out – and is virtually as solid as solid can be. The chemical matches are going to be the icing on the cake, linking the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro, and Papua Indonesia.
Meanwhile, at www.chroniclejournal.com/news/cp/entertainment/has-perfect-storms-solved… … which is basically the musings of a particular scientist who has persuaded himself that it was a volcano in El Salvador that caused the 536 low growth tree ring event. The possibility that a cosmic event was also involved is presumably ruled out – by mainstream as a whole. They also rule out the cosmic event at the beginning of the Younger Dryas and it seems the recent Russian meteor has not caused anyone to think this sort of thing might have been going on in the historical past. The El Salvador volcano is as much a theory as the Mike Baillie theory.