Long term climate records from polar ice ...

• Main Author: Stauffer, Bernhard
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000
• Subjects: 530 Physics; Antarc*; Antarctica; Greenland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48350/158587; https://boris.unibe.ch/158587/

One of the great challenges in climate research is to investigate the principal mechanisms that control global climatic changes and an effective way to learn more about it, is the reconstruction of past climate changes. The most important sources of information about such changes and the associated composition of the atmosphere are the two large ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. Analysis of ice cores is the most powerful means we have to determine how climate has changed over the last few climatic cycles, and to relate this to changes in atmospheric composition, in particular to concentrations of the principal greenhouse gases – CO2, CH4 and N2O (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide). Transitions from cold ice age climates to warmer interstadials have always been accompanied by an increase of the atmospheric concentration of the three principal greenhouse gases. This increase has been, at least for CO2, vital for the ending of glacial epochs. A highly simplified course of events for the past four ...