What does the ice core data show?
Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances.
How do ice cores show global warming?
By looking at past concentrations of greenhouse gasses in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gasses to temperature. Ice coring has been around since the 1950s.
What can ice cores tell us about past conditions in the atmosphere?
The icy layers also hold particles—aerosols such as dust, ash, pollen, trace elements and sea salts—that were in the atmosphere at that time. These particles remain in the ice thousands of years later, providing physical evidence of past global events, such as major volcanic eruptions.
What kind of data is collected from glacial core samples?
Ice core samples taken at the Vostok station are used to collect data on historical carbon dioxide levels. The data consist of measurements of the percentage of atmospheric gasses, such as CO2 in fossil air bubbles that have been trapped in snow flakes and compressed into ice over 400,000 years old.
What types of information can be collected from ice cores quizlet?
Looking at snowfall in ice cores over such a long period of time can provide clues to climate change by providing evidence of temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric conditions.
How is CO2 measured in ice cores?
Scientists use air trapped in the ice to determine the CO2 levels of past climates, whereas they use the ice itself to determine temperature. But because air diffuses rapidly through the ice pack, those air bubbles are younger than the ice surrounding them.
What do ice cores tell us about the relationship between global temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations?
What do ice cores tell us about the relationship between global temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations? Ice cores show us that temperatures and CO2 concentrations are always closely correlated.
What can we learn from ice cores?
After analyzing enough ice core slices, which may each represent anywhere from a week to a year of time, a researcher can look for patterns to track changes in the atmosphere’s composition and temperature, and what activity on Earth shaped it.
How do ice cores provide information on climate change quizlet?
What constituents of an ice core enable the reconstruction of past temperatures?
The composition of water molecules in ice cores is used to reconstruct past temperatures at time scales from the annual cycle to long term climate variations, such as glacial-interglacial oscillations.
What can be learned from ice cores?
Examining the gasses trapped in ice cores is how scientists first learned that the amount of carbon dioxide and the global temperature have been linked at least the last million years of Earth’s history.
What do ice cores tell us about the relationship between global temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations quizlet?