1. Proxy data
Our knowledge of past climate is based on analysis of “proxy” records, or natural histories that are preserved & are sensitive to climate
Ice cores - examples
Pollen from sediments
Tree rings
Fossils
Social/anthropologic records

2. Ice cores & climate

3. Ice coring locations

4. Antarctica

5. Antarctic ice coring

6. Ice coring in Greenland:

7. GISP2
Berthing in tents

8. GISP2 camp

9. GISP2
Work areas in weatherports

10. GISP2 deep ice core: drilling dome & tower

11. GISP2: inside drilling dome

12. GISP2
Recovering & examining 6-m long section of ice core

13. GISP2
Cutting core w/ saw
Dark bands indicate annual dust layers

14. Shallow ice coring in Greenland

16. Undergraduate student Tiffany House saws ice core to 2 x 2 x 100 cm pieces, then loads onto melter for analysis

17. Continuous flow analysis (CFA)
Spectroscopic & spectrofluorometric methods
Depth resolution ~2 cm

18. Comparison of annual markers, NASA-U core 1
Anklin et al., JGR 1998
Depth, m

19. Ice core analysis
Result is a record of the Earth’s atmosphere & climate over the past 500,000 years
Year-by-year record for past 20,000-50,000 years
Century-by-century record for past 200,000 years
Millenial scale record for past 500,000 years