Climate: Past, Present & Future

How to reconstruct past climates from water stable isotopes in Polar ice cores ?

Mathieu Casado, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany. Anais Orsi, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Université Paris-Saclay, France March 15, 2018

Backlit layering in a snow pit in Antarctica (credit waisdivide.unh.edu )

Ice cores are a favored archive to study past climates, because they provide a number of indications on the history of the climate and of the atmospheric composition. Among these, water stable isotopes are considered as a very reliable temperature proxy. Yet, their interpretation is sometimes more complicated than a simple one-to-one correspondence with local temperature and requires intercomparis ...[Read More]

Mountain glacier variations: natural thermometers and rainfall gauges

Pierre-Henri BLARD, CRPG (CNRS, Université de Lorraine), France - Laboratoire de Glaciologie, ULB, Bruxelles, Belgium. February 14, 2018

Glaciers from the Andes Cordillera (Peru, Southern America). Photo credit: Julien Charreau

Name of proxy Fluctuations of mountain glaciers Type of record Geomorphological features Paleoenvironment Continent – High mountain areas Period of time investigated From historical periods (c.a. 300 years ago) to the end of the Pleistocene (up to 200 000 years back in time) How does it work? Mountain – or “alpine” – glaciers are small ice bodies (from 1 to 10 000 km2). Alt ...[Read More]

Varves – Revealing the past layer by layer

Matthew Carney, PhD Student in Physical Geography Manchester Metropolitan University December 22, 2017

Figure 1. Extraction and splitting of glacial lake cores from Chat Moss, Lancashire, U.K.

Name of proxy Varved glacial lake sediments Type of record Sedimentological structures Paleoenvironment Ice marginal lake environments Period of time investigated Last Glacial Termination (LGT, c.21-14 thousands of years (ka)) to present times How do varves work? Proglacial lakes form in front of glaciers and act as sinks for water and sediment flowing from melting ice. Analyses of proglacial lake ...[Read More]

What is in the (European) air?

Caroline Jacques December 6, 2017

Figure 1: ICOS station network (ICOS ERIC, https://www.icos-ri.eu)

You thought that Mauna Loa was the only observatory to provide continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and were disappointed because Hawaii is way too far from your study area or because you wanted to know how bad the air is in your hometown? The US have been monitoring the composition of the atmosphere since 1972, but what about Europe? Since 2008, Europe has its own ...[Read More]