Past Climate Records.

What are climate change records?

Climate change records are data that can help us understand, measure and predict weather trough out the years using either proxy measurements  - like tree rings, ice cores, boreholes in oil-drilling or coral observation - or measure tools - like weather balloons, data from satellite, equations or statistical algorithms, overlapping data from ground -base data from weather stations, etc. 

How do volcanoes affect climate change?

They effect trough a negative feedback where the earth released the pert of the core's heat in the form of magma. But they also release to the atmosphere ashes, sulphor dioxide and sulfates. They create a form of aerosols that darken and spreads out in the atmosphere, provoking a cooling of the climate by blocking out solar radiation. But this has a short time effect.

How is today’s warming different from the past?

There is a new component in game. Not as much as new as a new record of it: CO2. In the last century the CO2 concentration increased heavily. We might correlate it with the extraordinary rise of temperature trough out the last century.

What is the role of isotopes in determining temperatures from the past?

Calcium carbonate, one of the elements found for example in the layers of  sediments relates to the acid rain that proceeds the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other gases released by volcanoes after a ice age. The carbonate have the presence and concentration of  of isotopes that allow us to read past temperatures.

How have trees been used to reconstruct different climate variables across the world?

They are a valid evidence of past climate and serve as proxy records, either with the use of an incremental borer, that pierce the tree and take a sample that allow us to study climate changes in the tree rings (hot summers the tree has a greater vigor, cooler ones it has fain rings, or with the observation of dead trees (ones that were cut long time ago for example). 

How can ice cores provide a record of atmospheric composition?

They serve as proxy records as well, and a source of evidence of past climate. They register seasonal snow layers, that can provide information trough the observation of several bore holes sample of temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pollution, wind patterns and even volcanic activity .Isotopes measurements are also very important, giving the concentration of oxygen and relating it to a given temperature. But also the chemistry reading of methane can indicate a of of bacteria, or the presence of ashes can be use to indicate the presence of volcanic activity or wind strength.