Why are caves wet

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Caves are dark, cold, wet, tight, and can be claustrophobic. The appeal is going where nobody has ever gone before. Your flashlight may be the first to light parts of a cave.

Pingree recalls a rescue of two people who had entered a cave with only one flashlight, and when its batteries died, were unable to find their way out in the total darkness. Outside temperature swings are buffered by soil and rock.

A number of animals, including porcupines, snakes, and bears will sometimes use caves as winter dens. Many northern bat species use caves for hibernation. These hibernacula once hosted many thousands of bats, before white nose syndrome, a fungal disease, decimated populations. Some of these caves have now been closed to protect bats from human visitors, who can disrupt roosts and spread white nose syndrome via their clothing. Because the amount of water making its way into the caves determines the amount speleothems grow, their layers can indicate times of both heavy precipitation and drought in the area.

Paleoclimatologists can also collect other climate information from speleothems by looking at the amount of a particular oxygen isotope they contain. There are two main types of oxygen isotopes in water, and the ratio of the two depends on several climate-related factors including air temperature, precipitation, and the volume of ice sheets in the world.

Speleothems preserve this ratio of oxygen isotopes as they form, which also allows paleoclimatologists to use them to reconstruct past climate conditions. A single cave cannot, however, paint the full picture of past climate conditions in an area.