EARTH 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ocean Acidification, Stoma, Gypsum
Document Summary
Climate records hockey stick- the curve in the recorded and documented temperature. warming has continued almost unabated to the present day. Proxies- are substitute measurements that are made to determine the conditions at times before humans could measure climate directly. sediments deposited in the ocean basins accumulate in a layer-cake fashion and entrap the fossil remains of once living organisms. The major ice sheets have accumulated layer by layer over time. These layers record temperature, precipitation, and wind patterns at the time the ice formed. Tiny gas bubbles trapped within the ice preserve the composition of the atmosphere including levels of co2 and methane (ch4). Kilometer upon kilometer of cored ice, and the bubbles within it, preserve an incredible record of earth"s climate variations for hundreds of thousands of years. Sections of ocean sediments have been sampled extensively by a suite of coring operations dating back to the 1940s.