Latest Paleoclimatology Stories

A team of Spanish researchers have used different geological samples, extracted from the Enol lake in Asturias, to show that the Holocene, a period that started 11,600 years ago, did not have a climate as stable as was believed. The Holocene period, which includes the last 11,600 years of our history, has always been described as a stable period in terms of climatic conditions, especially when compared to the abrupt changes that occurred in the last ice age, which ended around 10,000 years...

New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated. By looking at how the Earth's climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: "What is the dangerous level of global warming?" Some...

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, has produced a prediction of what climate records from Greenland might look like over the last 800,000 years. Drill cores taken from Greenland's vast ice sheets provided the first clue that Earth's climate is capable of very rapid transitions and have led to vigorous scientific investigation into the possible causes of abrupt climate change. Such evidence comes from the accumulation of layers of ancient...

Melting ice sheets contributed much more to rising sea levels than thermal expansion of warming ocean waters during the Last Interglacial Period, a UA-led team of researchers has foundBy Daniel Stolte, University of ArizonaThermal expansion of seawater contributed only slightly to rising sea levels compared to melting ice sheets during the Last Interglacial Period, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has found.The study combined paleoclimate records with computer simulations of...

Team of scientists uncovers new informationBy Judy Holmes, Syracuse UniversityThe question seems simple enough: What happens to the Earth's temperature when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase? The answer is elusive. However, clues are hidden in the fossil record. A new study by researchers from Syracuse and Yale universities provides a much clearer picture of the Earth's temperature approximately 50 million years ago when CO2 concentrations were higher than today. The results may shed...

Change view of water temperature during time when first modern mammals emergedWhat tales they tell of their former lives, these old bones of sirenians, relatives of today's dugongs and manatees.And now, geologists have found, they tell of the waters in which they swam.While researching the evolutionary ecology of ancient sirenians--commonly known as sea cows--scientist Mark Clementz and colleagues unexpectedly stumbled across data that could change the view of climate during the Eocene...

Garbage mounds left by prehistoric humans might have driven the formation of many of the Florida Everglades' tree islands, distinctive havens of exceptional ecological richness in the sprawling marsh that are today threatened by human development.Tree islands are patches of relatively high and dry ground that dot the marshes of the Everglades. Typically a meter (3.3 feet) or so high, many of them are elevated enough to allow trees to grow. They provide a nesting site for alligators and a...

The latest evidence of the dominant role humans play in changing Earth's climate comes not from observations of Earth's ocean, atmosphere or land surface, but from deep within its molten core.Scientists have long known that the length of an Earth day - the time it takes for Earth to make one full rotation - fluctuates around a 24-hour average. Over the course of a year, the length of a day varies by about 1 millisecond, getting longer in the winter and shorter in the summer. These seasonal...

About 450 million years ago, Earth suffered the second-largest mass extinction in its history"”the Late Ordovician mass extinction, during which more than 75 percent of marine species died. Exactly what caused this tremendous loss in biodiversity remains a mystery, but now a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has discovered new details supporting the idea that the mass extinction was linked to a cooling climate."While it's been known for a long...

A team of researchers conducting an extensive study of growth rings in trees say there could be a link between the rise and fall of ancient civilizations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate. They based their findings on data from more than 9,000 wooden artifacts that have come from civilizations from over the past 2,500 years, BBC News reports. In the study, published online in the journal Science, the researchers found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity,...