Dense clouds suffocate the sky over Mongolia’s Khangai mountain range, and Amy Hessl, by her own admission, is about to cry. She sprawls on the dry, scrubby ground, defeated. As the temperature drops on this early June day and the clouds give way to icy raindrops, all Hessl can mutter is, “I feel sick.”
Hessl, a geographer from West Virginia University, studies tree rings for what they can tell us about climate and past environments. She’s come to Mongolia to investigate one of history’s most enduring puzzles: how Genghis Khan set forth from such an inhospitable place to beget the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known. Her team, working to unearth this ancient mystery, has found clues of another climate-driven transformation — one that’s still underway. It’s a tale in which herders and nomads are streaming to urban centers while resources are being exploited without long-term environmental planning, and people, individually and as a society, have no choice but to adapt.
In the past 75 years, Mongolia’s temperature has increased more than 2 degrees Celsius, more than twice the global average, and its weather has changed in curious and counterintuitive ways. The country is like a petri dish in which we can see the complex interplay of social, environmental and economic challenges the rest of the world will be dealing with in the coming decades.
On this blustery June day, for Hessl to continue her scientific sleuthing, she needs access to a specific sort of research site, one where trees that died hundreds of years ago have been preserved without rotting or insect infestation. In Mongolia, that means one thing: old lava fields. After two days and about 200 miles of rough travel, the location Hessl chose is tantalizingly close. But there’s a problem.
The expedition’s drivers say the washed-out track between the team and the site is risky in good weather, and impassable when glazed with ice — a real possibility in the freezing rain. Hessl despairs that a year of planning and a huge outlay of money — $30,000 in travel expenses alone — will have been for nothing if she’s forced to turn back now.
