Here are some books that you may find useful during your studies. Search the Bennies catalogue Accessit for more, or browse the Non-fiction collection NFS.
Paleoclimatology is the study of past climates. Since it is not possible to go back in time to see what climates were like, scientists use imprints created during past climate, known as proxies, to interpret paleoclimate. Organisms, such as diatoms, forams, and coral serve as useful climate proxies. Other proxies include ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores (which include diatoms, foraminifera, microbiota, pollen, and charcoal within the sediment and the sediment itself).
The cornerstone of the success achieved by ice core scientists reconstructing climate change over many thousands of years is the ability to measure past changes in both atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature.
From the ice sheets of Antarctica and the seabed of the Atlantic, to the boreal forests of Europe and corals of southeast Asia, proxy data is found across the Earth’s land and ocean.
NOAA holds an archive of more than 10,000 proxy datasets covering more than a dozen categories. With its permission, Carbon Brief has mapped this data.
Use the categories in the legend on the left to select a particular proxy or archive type, and the buttons in the top-right hand corner to zoom in and out. Clicking on an individual data point will reveal the period covered by the data, the site name and a link to NOAA’s reference webpage for further information.
An excellent example of the scientific process. * Observation of the past temperatures of the earth (using oxygen isotopes in ice cores) and the present quantity of greenhouse gases. * Construction of a computer model of the greenhouse effect with such variables as clouds, cities and plants. * Testing the model by using data from the past to predict present conditions.
The impacts of a warming world and changing climate are more evident every day. Many of the Earth's tropical glaciers are in jeopardy because of human activity's effect on the atmosphere. William Brangham reports on a couple in Columbus, Ohio, who have dedicated their scientific careers to preserving and studying these crucial, endangered parts of the planet's ecosystem.
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey are drilling ice cores in the Antarctic and analysing them to find out what the Earth's temperature and carbon dioxide levels were like in the past. In this video, Ice Core Scientist Nerilie Abram reveals how we recover and study ice through the ages, and how this gives us an insight into how the Earth's climate is changing.
HSC Earth and Environmental Science.
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Picture Climate: What Can We Learn from Ice?
Plants that have specific requirements for temperature and moisture can tell us about the climate of the region where they are found. As climates change over time, so do the plant species that are able to grow in a specific place. Knowing what plants used to be able to grow in a place can tell us what the climate was like in the past.
The oxygen isotope ratio is the first way used to determine past temperatures from the ice cores. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have a different number of neutrons. All isotopes of an element have the same number of protons and electrons but a different number of neutrons in the nucleus. Because isotopes have a different number of neutrons, they have different mass.