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Letter

Nature Geoscience 2, 210–214 (1 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/ngeo444

Orbitally driven east|[ndash]|west antiphasing of South|[nbsp]|American precipitation

Francisco W. Cruz , Mathias Vuille , Stephen J. Burns , Xianfeng Wang , Hai Cheng , Martin Werner , R. Lawrence Edwards , Ivo Karmann , Augusto S. Auler & Hanh Nguyen

The variations of tropical precipitation are antiphased between the hemispheres on orbital timescales. This antiphasing arises through the alternating strength of incoming solar radiation in the two hemispheres, which affects monsoon intensity and hence the position of the meridional atmospheric circulation of the Hadley cells.