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7 - Paleoceanography and paleoclimatology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2012

Steven Emerson
Affiliation:
University of Washington
John Hedges
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

We end Part 1 of this book with a study of past changes in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and ice volume. Interpretation of past climatic conditions from chemical tracers and isotopes preserved in the geological record requires knowledge and intuition developed from the study of present-day oceanography. For this reason descriptions of how paleoceanographic tracers are used to unravel insights about past ocean circulation and biogeochemistry serve as a review of the geochemical perspectives presented in the first six chapters of this book.

Present human activities create chemical sources to the environment that are, in some cases, comparable to those of the natural (pre-industrial) Earth. Since some of these anthropogenic additions may affect the natural order of the Earth's climate system, it is urgent to understand how the natural system functions mechanistically. For example, the effect of rapidly rising anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 on the climate system of the Earth is a first-order question (see Chapter 11). Even though global models that incorporate physical and biological interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, terrestrial and ice “spheres” now allow scientists to recreate the Earth's system, reasons for even the most first-order observations of climate change during the past million years are still poorly understood. The waxing and waning of glacial ice with roughly a 100 ky cycle is likely triggered by variations in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface because of changes in the Earth's orbital motions around the sun.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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