Questions tagged [paleoclimatology]
Paleoclimatology concerns climate and climate variability before the onset of instrumented measurements.
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Is there any natural phenomenon that can account for the 100 fold faster CO2 rate increase?
"Based on the best historical data that we have available CO2 is probably increasing at a rate at of least 100 times faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years." Pieter Tans lead scientist of ...
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Did climate cool down when underground hydrocarbons stocks formed?
As far as I understand, the dominant theory of modern climate change says that recent warming is mainly caused by the massive burning of hydrocarbons that used to be stored in solid form mostly ...
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What, if any, paleoclimate data can be derived from igneous rocks?
Paleoclimate data often derives from sedimentary rocks. Metamorphic rocks can also contribute to paleoclimate information in a wide variety of ways.
What about igneous rocks? I guess that this can ...
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Will a new glacial age take place on Earth or Holocene will become a new climatic epoch?
Pleistocene shows a switch between glacial and interglacial ages.
However, humanity is burning fossil fuels and increasing atmosphere's $\ce{CO2}$ content.
Should we expect a new glacial age after ...
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How accurate are climate proxies in giving us a clear picture of global average temperatures throughout Earth history?
Since reliable modern records of climate only began in the 1880s, proxies provide a means for scientists to determine climatic patterns before record-keeping began, though it appears that the the ...
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Is there conclusive evidence to refute an earlier oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere?
The Great Oxygenation Event (sometimes called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), as in the journal Nature) occurred around 2.2 to 2.45 billion years ago (Frei et al. 2009). However, in the article A ...
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What is the status of the Raymo & Ruddiman idea that Tibet cooled the Earth?
What is the current status of the Raymo & Ruddiman hypothesis that the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau during the Cenozoic cooled the Earth, resulting the current ice age(*)?
cf. Raymo, M.E. and W....
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What would it take to confirm or refute the Snowball Earth Hypothesis?
Since Harland's sedimentary work and Budyko's models in the 1960s, geologists have hypothesized that the Earth may once have been completely frozen. There are various lines of evidence for this event.
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What was the ocean circulation like during the time of Pangaea?
So Enderton and Marshall (2009) wrote an interesting paper on the ocean circulation of various aquaplanets covered with certain terrain: e.g. an aquaplanet with a small ridge of land that ranged from ...
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How do we know that we are NOT in an "Ice Age?"
Historically, the earth has had five "Ice Ages" Each of them lasted millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of years.
The last ice age reportedly ended perhaps 10,000 years ago. That ...
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Why deep ocean didn't freeze during snowball Earth?
I know that at least twice in its history Earth was totally frozen. I also know that the last time it happened there were already life on Earth, and it survived. In deep water, under the ice, which ...
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What, if any, paleoclimate data can be derived from stromatolite fossils?
Stromatolite fossils have a layered structure vaguely reminiscent of tree rings, which are a well-known source for climate data. Although the formation process of stromatolite layers is less seasonal ...
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How long does earth take to recover from mass extinctions? What is "normal"?
Wikipedia states the following about the P-Tr extinction event:
"Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event,[5]...
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Did the impact event that caused the Chicxulub-Crater definitively and single-handedly cause the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction?
Opinions abound on the web. What is the state of the current science regarding this theory and what is the best evidence? Is the theory gaining or losing traction? If it's losing what's the best of ...
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How were we able to measure carbon dioxide levels in earlier climates?
It is said that carbon dioxide levels were much higher during the Cretaceous and Eocene periods: which proxies are used to determine paleo-pCO2?
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Did the Neolithic Revolution have an effect on the earth's climate?
I imagine that human agriculture had a major effect on the composition of flora across the planet's surface.
Did the transition from gathering to growing have a measurable effect on climate? If so, ...
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What makes a nuclear winter so extreme and destructive?
This may be a sort of, pertinent to the times, and disturbing question, inspired by the difficulties surrounding North Korea and the situation with it and nuclear weapons.
I've heard of this idea of "...
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Does general relativity influence climate (vs Newtonian mechanics)
That may sounds like a silly question but here it is.
One of the early great successes of general relativity was to explain the discrepancy between the prehilion advance of Mercury predicted by ...
