with pollen & microfossilsindicating warm temps.

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/images/eol/2003/owenslake.html

http://www.epa.gov/region09/air/owens/

http://www.owensvalleyhistory.com/ov_aqueduct1/page19.html

Amazon.com

The Himalayan glaciers feed seven of the great rivers of Asia (the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang He) and supply fresh (melt) water runoff to 1/3 of the world’s population (~ 2 billion people).

http://assets.panda.org/downloads/glacierspaper.pdf

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Himalayas.jpg

Global warming and freshwater supply in Asia…

Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically."

Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet, p. 57

Reconstructing climates is detective work.

http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/images/liquidgold_treering.jpg

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/gened/egee101/Examples/109_temperature_new.html

http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/darwin/dhwqmp/dhwq-200-03.html

Natural archives

http://banana.ifa.hawaii.edu/Weather/weather_station.gif

Price of rye in Germany vs. time expressed as an index. (Source: Lamb, 1995) http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

Instrumental or historical archives

Sediment accumulates in “low spots”

http://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/maps/iodp_odp_dsdp.gif

http://www.usssp-iodp.org/Education/One_core.html

What are the sediment archives and what can they tell us?

Sediment Archive Proxy Indicator ofcoarse sand fraction of

biogenic material surface and deep water environmental

conditionslithic grains (ice-rafted debris) glacial activity on landvolcanic ash volcanic activity on land

Azolla: freshwater fern spore

http://www.water.sannet.ne.jp/nirei/palynology/zukan/spore01.jpg

pollen

http://www.immediart.com/catalog/images/big_images/NS_PN_B786630-Pollen_grain,_ESEM-SPL.jpg

Biological clues

Polar type

The dominant planktonic species, indicating

presence of cool surface waters

Non-polar types

T. G.

Developmental Steps in SST History

http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/children/minerals/potplant.htm

Illite clay: physical weathering

Kaolinite clay: chemical weathering

http://www.ualberta.ca/~jwaldron/gallerypages/wavetide.html

Types physical and compositional evidence of past environments

http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical10.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

http://the-periodic-table.org/printable.gif

Determining age – isotopic decay “clocks”

Determining age – isotopic decay “clocks”

Determining age – isotopic decay “clocks”

http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect11.html

Determining age – counting backwards (seasonal or annual layers)

Determining age – matching to known patterns

magnetic pole reversal pattern

http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/pmabutlr.gif

Determining age – matching to known patterns

Glacial-interglacial cycles

Resolution of record - How detailed can you get?depends on sedimentation (accumulation) rate

http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/207_IR/chap_06/c6_f7.htm

Resolution of record - How detailed can you get?depends on how disturbed archive is

What archives you use depends on the timespan you are trying to reconstruct.

And – the more clues the better – aim for amultiproxy approach.