Pale white dot
Steven Wade Veatch (USA) and Vishwam Sankaran (India) “There’s nothing new under the sun” goes a famous saying and these words are very apt when trying to understand Earth’s climate trends. Thanks to numerous discoveries made about Earth’s ancient past, we now know that our climate has never been static. According to geological and palaeontological records, climate change has affected the Earth throughout geologic time. In this context, this is the second of a series of articles about climate change over geological time. The first is A warming medieval climate supports a revolution in agriculture by Steven Wade Veatch and Cheryl Bibeau. To understand climate change today, researchers study past climates and events that affect climates, such as volcanic activity, solar radiation, sunspot activity, astronomical changes and other factors that influence climate. Once we understand the dominoes that have fallen during the past climate change events, we can understand and predict – to some degree – the kind of patterns that may follow current trends. To do this, scientists piece together clues from past climates provided by rock formations. Scientists likewise examine fossil records that yield climate signals from the past. These fossils range from prehistoric pollen to dinosaurs. Putting both geological and fossil records together reconstructs ancient climates and environments. More recent climate change is studied through climate records held in polar ice caps and ice sheets, ice cores, glaciers, isotopes of elements (like oxygen, carbon and sulphurfur), soil sediments and tree rings. When we think of the term … Read More