Long continental climate records from tropical and sub-tropical regions are crucial to resolve long-standing questions about the relative importance of tropical and high-latitude climate processes in translating external climate forcing into regional climate variability. The ICDP drilling project ‘DeepCHALLA' is proposed to exploit the continuous sediment record of Lake Challa in easternmost equatorial Africa. Its principal objective is to acquire high-resolution and well-dated proxy data of continental climate and ecosystem change near the Equator, spanning a full glacial-interglacial cycle (150,000 years, covered by the uppermost ~100 m of Quaternary deposits).

Keywords: Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Lake Challa, Kilimanjaro, Dynamics, Monsoons, Paleoclimate, Tropical Climate