During much of the late Quaternary, Owens Lake overflowed into one or more of four successively lower-elevation basins. Most of the water came from the high, eastern slopes of the southern Sierra Nevada, and changes in the volumes of that water reflect a dominant climatic cycle of ~100 k.y.

Variations in the inflow to, and outflow from, Owens Lake since ca. 800 ka left biological, chemical, mineralogical, and geophysical evidence in the sediments of those changes. Biological evidence includes fossil ostracodes, diatoms, fish, and mollusks (and δ¹⁸O data from their shells) which indicate fresh or brackish lake water on the basis of their modern habitats. Fossil pollens indicate ~20 regional vegetation cycles during the same period. Chemical evidence of high inflow and, commonly, outflow volumes is provided by the low inorganic- and organic-C content of some sediments, reflecting short lake-water residence times; long residence times produced higher and more variable quantities of these components. Mineralogical variations in illite/smectite ratios indicate changes in weathering processes and glacial comminution. High magnetic susceptibility correlates with other criteria that indicate high runoff.

Between 810 ka and 645 ka, Owens Lake was fresh, several meters deep, and depositing silt with a few beds of sand; it supported a flora and fauna now found in fresh, sometimes very cool, waters. (Note that most geologic ages describing the OL-92 chronology have been rounded to the nearest 5 or 10 ka.) A shallow-but-freshwater lake may have been the result of accelerated sedimentation during an earlier (>800 ka) glaciation in the Sierra Nevada, choking the basin with sediment nearly to its spillway level. Between 645 ka and 450 ka, the lake was probably even shallower, depositing beds of coarse to fine sand, but overflowing periodically allowing its water to remain fresh. Between 450 ka and 5 ka, Owens Lake was mostly deep, alternating between spilling and being closed part of the time. It deposited silt and clay on its floor, yet underwent detectable variations in salinity caused by climate changes; this part of the record is the most easily interpreted and constitutes the main basis for comparing this paleoclimatic record with other long records. From 5 ka to A.D. 1913, when the Owens River was diverted into an aqueduct, Owens Lake was shallow (~2 m to ~15 m), moderately saline (~5% to <15% salts), and depositing oolites. After 1913, the lake desiccated.

Comparison of the Owens Lake water-depth record with that of Searles Lake, two-basins downstream during much of late Pleistocene time, shows that they underwent similar responses to climate, but sedimentation changes documenting those responses commenced thousands of years apart, apparently because changes in precipitation volumes occurred gradually. Owens Lake, at the base of high mountains, was the first to reflect increasing amounts of regional precipitation; Searles, in a more arid environment, was the first to reflect decreasing amounts of precipitation.

Devils Hole, 150 km east of Owens Lake, has a well dated isotopic-temperature record that resembles the Owens Lake-depth record. Marine records of Pleistocene glacial fluctuations, which measure high-latitude ice-sheet volumes and thus both precipitation and temperature at those latitudes, also resemble the Owens Lake history. There are, however, differences between the ages of the maxima and minima of climatic events as reconstructed from the Owens Lake core and similar-appearing inflections in the other two records; the differences range from 0 to 33 k.y. and average ~15 k.y.

The question arises whether the differences between those ages are results of errors in the time-scale used for the Owens Lake record, or were there significant differences in the times when atmospheric climate change began to affect its different elements. The three records compared here are measurements of different elements and combinations of elements in two latitude belts: the deep-sea marine records measure combinations of temperature and precipitation that determined global ice volumes (at mostly high latitudes), the Devils Hole record measures atmospheric temperatures (in its mid-latitude region), and the Owens Lake record measures effective precipitation (in the same mid-latitude region).