The field of paleoclimatology relies on physical, chemical, and biological proxies of past climate changes that have been preserved in natural archives such as glacial ice, tree rings, sediments, corals, and speleothems. Paleoclimate archives obtained through field investigations, ocean sediment coring expeditions, ice sheet coring programs, and other projects allow scientists to reconstruct climate change over much of earth’s history.
When combined with computer model simulations, paleoclimatic reconstructions are used to test hypotheses about the causes of climatic change, such as greenhouse gases, solar variability, earth’s orbital variations, and hydrological, oceanic, and tectonic processes. This book is a comprehensive, state-of-the art synthesis of paleoclimate research covering all geological timescales, emphasizing topics that shed light on modern trends in the earth’s climate. Thomas M. Cronin discusses recent discoveries about past periods of global warmth, changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, abrupt climate and sea-level change, natural temperature variability, and other topics directly relevant to controversies over the causes and impacts of climate change. This text is geared toward advanced undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in geology, geography, biology, glaciology, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, and climate modeling, fields that contribute to paleoclimatology. This volume can also serve as a reference for those requiring a general background on natural climate variability.
Table of Content
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Paleoclimatology and Modern Challenges
2. Methods in Paleoclimatology
3. Deep Time: Climate from 3.8 Billion to 65 Million Years Ago
4. Cenozoic Climate
5. Orbital Climate Change
6. Glacial Millennial Climate Change
7. Millennial Climate Events During Deglaciation
8. Holocene Climate Variability
9. Abrupt Climate Events
10. Internal Modes of Climate Variability
11. The Anthropocene I: Global and Hemispheric Temperature
12. The Anthropocene II: Climatic and Hydrological Change During the Last 2000 Years
Epilogue
Appendix: Paleoclimate Proxies
References
Index
About the author
Dr. Thomas Cronin is a Research Geologist at the United States Geological Survey. He specializes in North American estuaries, Arctic Ocean paleoclimate records, North Atlantic paleoceanography, Cenozoic stratigraphy and climate, Quaternary sea level changes, and estuaries and human and climatic impact.
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