Monday, March 3, 2014

Ice cores and predicting past Climates

Ice cores to me seem to big a common data collection tool for how climate was in the past, especially for the Antarctic and Arctic. Theses cores are collected with a tool to extend down farther into ice structures to get a longer period of climates. These cores leave in them stored gases and other concentrations of sediments that can be used to explain the climate of that region a certain number of years ago. For example, if there is dust and sediment from volcanoes, then they can make a prediction that a volcano erupted a certain number of years in that region where the ice core was collected. Not only do they help tell the temperature, but they also can give us estimates of rainfall and snowfall during certain periods. All of these is good if we ever want to make a real change, because of any finding that shows we are causing the changes in climate that are far off from the norms of the past.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_%28climate%29
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/ice-core

No comments:

Post a Comment