Paleoclimatology: Probing Past Climate through Environmental Proxies
This course introduces the principles and methodologies for reconstructing past climate variability based on environmental proxies. It also provides an overview of natural drivers of climate variability.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
1. Describe methodologies for past climate reconstruction and their limitations
2. Explain methods for age determination of natural samples
3. Develop a basic understanding of the climate system and its variability
4. Summarize the space environment relevant to Earth’s climate and habitability
Learn the basics of the methodologies for reconstructing the past climate, including temperatures, precipitation, and glacier advances. Discuss the advantages and limitations of environmental proxies, including tree rings, corals, ice cores, and sediments. Students also learn dating methodologies, including radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, and orbital tuning-based age models. An overview of habitability in the context of planetary climate will also be introduced.
Week 1: Overview of Earth’s climate history
Weeks 2-3: Overview of the Earth system, including climate forcing parameters (subsystems of the climate system, greenhouse gases, clouds, impacts of volcanic eruptions, solar forcing, orbital forcing)
Weeks 4-10: Methodologies for past climate reconstruction (environmental proxies, tree rings, corals, ice cores, stalagmites, lake sediments, marine sediments, uncertainties and limitations) and for dating natural samples (radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, tephra-based dating, U–Th dating, cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating, ice-core age modeling, orbital tuning-based age models)
Week 11: Methodologies for reconstructing the near–Earth space environment, including solar activity (solar variability, heliosphere, cosmic rays, geomagnetic field effects, cosmic-ray-induced isotopes, space weather)
Weeks 12-15: Practical exercises and a small project based on proxy records, including a short presentation (basic data handling, interpretation of proxy records, and a small project involving data analysis or a literature-based study)
Participation in lectures 40%, Project 30%, Presentation 30% (two short literature review presentations in Weeks 2-11 and a final presentation in Weeks 12-15)
Familiarity with introductory statistics and basic data handling using programming languages (e.g., MATLAB or Python) is encouraged.
Earth’s Climate: Past and Future, by William F. Ruddiman (2014). W. H. Freeman and Company
Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary, by Raymond S. Bradley (2014), Academic Press