Paleoclimatology

Paleoclimatology is an interdisciplinary research field with the participation of the Geology, Meteorology, palynology and other scientific disciplines. You tried using different data from climate archives ( proxy data) the climatic conditions of the geological past ( climate history ) to reconstruct from which can be derived from statements about the future climate of the Earth. Paleoclimatology is also an important part of the climatology.

Based on the animal and plant world fossil obtained analyzing the climatic conditions of the era. The basis for this, among other things, coal deposits, desertification and glacial traces.

The best-studied climate data derived from ice cores, tree rings ( dendrochronology ), coral and shells ( Sklerochronologie ), (sea) sediments ( Warvenzählung ) and speleothems ( stalagmites ). The comparability of the data of these climate indicators (german proxies ) lies in the possibility, at least largely to distinguish annual layers and measure data is separated. An example of this isotope analysis in the mass spectrometer.

History of Research

As the first fundamental work paleoclimatology applies to systematize the The climates of the geological past, in which he tried, the new branch of science of paleoclimatology in the context of his theory of continental drift from 1919 to 1923, developed by Alfred Wegener book.

As the founder of paleoclimatology Karl Friedrich Schimper may apply. He has described in a 1843 paper entitled "On the weather phases of antiquity " numerous references about "fossil preserved " traces to drought, rain, hail and wind. As the father of the modern science of systematically operated air of antiquity to Martin Schwarzenbach.