GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

PALEOCLIMATOLOGY
 Paleoclimatology is the study of climate prior to the period of instrumental
measurements/records.

 To understand evolution of earth’s climatic system.

 Documents transition between different climatic conditions (e.g., glacial-interglacial

transition).

Proxy: In paleoclimatology, scientists use proxy data to reconstruct past climate conditions.
These proxy data are preserved physical characteristics of the environment that can stand in for
direct measurements.

 Paleoclimatologists gather proxy data from natural recorders of climate variability such as
corals, pollen, ice cores, tree rings, caves, pack rat middens, ocean and lake sediments cores,
speleothems and historical data.

 By analyzing records taken from these and other proxy sources, scientists can extend the
understanding of climate far beyond the instrumental record.

Paleoclimate Archives and Proxies:

Principal Sources of Proxy Data:

1. Geological,
2. Glaciological,
3. Biological, and
4. Historical.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

Geological Proxies:

1. Corals:

 Corals are known as colonial organisms, because many individual creatures live and grow
while connected to each other.
 They are also dependent on one another for survival.
 The tiny, individual organisms that make up large coral colonies are called coral polyps.
 The polyps use ions in seawater to make limestone exoskeletons—skeletons outside the
body—for themselves.
 The skeletons are made up of calcium carbonate (CaCO3)
 A coral polyp is shaped like a cylinder, with a mouth at one end, surrounded by tentacles;
Coral polyp bodies are usually clear.
 Have narrow range of tolerance for environmental conditions.
 Annual banding pattern → light colour – summer condition; dark colour – winter
condition.
 They are prevalent in low latitude oceans.
 The texture of the calcite deposit varies seasonally.
 The chemical composition of the layers provides scientists with clues about past climates,
while the layered structure allows them to precisely date the changes they find.
 The annual banding patterns in the coral samples evident for visual inspection.
 In many cases X-ray imaging is required to clearly distinguish the bands.
 After scientists mark the annual layers in the X-ray images, they can extract samples from
various layers for chemical and isotopic analysis.

2. Lake sediments:
 Continuous accumulation of sediments.
 Records climatic variations (temperature, precipitation).
 Recovery of sediment core.
 Study of sediment core for various proxies
 Sediment composition.
 Colour, texture and structures.
 Magnetic properties.

 Lake sediments generally offer continuous records of climate and environmental change
over thousands of years or longer
 Lake sediment archives preserve numerous physical, geochemical, and biological
components that when measured can be used as a substitute, or proxy for specific past
conditions. Thus, several proxies are often available for analysis within a single record.
 Lakes are abundant and distributed worldwide, meaning that these sedimentary archives
offer a broad geographic coverage, encompassing diverse climatic zones and
environmental settings.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

Glaciological Proxies:

 Glaciology → scientific study of the glaciers and the processes involved.

 Ice core: Ice cores are cylinders of ice drilled from ice sheets and glaciers. They are
essentially frozen time capsules that allow scientists to reconstruct climate far into the past.
Layers in ice cores correspond to years and seasons, with the youngest ice at the top and the
oldest ice at the bottom of the core.
 Why use ice cores?
 They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air
chemistry from another time.
 Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going
back at least 800,000 years.
 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 cores have been drilled in ice sheets worldwide, but notably in Greenland and Antarctica.
High rates of snow accumulation provide excellent time resolution, and bubbles in the ice
core preserve actual samples of the world’s ancient atmosphere.

Table: Principal Sources of Paleoclimatic Information from Ice Cores.

 How do Ice Cores work?

 The large Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have huge, high plateaux where snow
accumulates in an ordered fashion.
 Slow ice flow at the centre of these ice sheets (near the ice divide) means that the
stratigraphy of the snow and ice is preserved.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

 Drilling a vertical hole through this ice involves a serious effort involving many scientists
and technicians, and usually involves a static field camp for a prolonged period of time.
 Shallow ice cores (100-200 m long) are easier to collect and can cover up to a few
hundred years of accumulation, depending on accumulation rates.
 Deeper cores require more equipment, and the borehole must be filled with drill fluid to
keep it open.
 The drill fluid used is normally a petroleum-derived liquid like kerosene. It must have a
suitable freezing point and viscosity.
 Collecting the deepest ice cores (up to 3000 m) requires a (semi)permanent scientific
camp and a long, multi-year campaign.

Fig: This schematic cross section of an ice sheet shows an ideal

drilling site at the centre of the polar plateau near the ice divide, with
ice flowing away from the ice divide in all direction.
 Layers in the ice:
 Ice cores preserve annual layers, making it simple to date the ice.
 Seasonal differences in the snow properties create layers – just like rings in trees.
 Unfortunately, annual layers become harder to see deeper in the ice core.
 Other ways of dating ice cores include geochemisty, layers of ash (tephra), electrical
conductivity, and using numerical flow models to understand age-depth relationships.

Fig: This 19 cm long of GISP2 ice core

from 1855 m depth shows annual layers
in the ice. This section contains 11
annual layers with summer layers
(arrowed) sandwiched between darker
winter layers.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

 Although radiometric dating of ice cores has been difficult, Uranium has been used to
date the Dome C ice core from Antarctica. Dust is present in ice cores, and it contains
Uranium. The decay of 238U to 234U from dust in the ice matrix can be used to provide an
additional core chronology.

 Information from Ice Cores:

Accumulation Rate:
The thickness of the annual layers in ice cores can be used to derive a precipitation rate
(after correcting for thinning by glacier flow). Past precipitation rates are an important
palaeoenvironmental indicator, often correlated to climate change, and it’s an essential
parameter for many past climate studies or numerical glacier simulations.

Melt Layers:
Ice cores provide us with lots of information beyond bubbles of gas in the ice. For
example, melt layers are related to summer temperatures. More melt layers indicate warmer
summer air temperatures. Melt layers are formed when the surface snow melts, releasing
water to percolate down through the snow pack. They form bubble-free ice layers, visible in
the ice core. The distribution of melt layers through time is a function of the past climate, and
has been used, for example, to show increased melting in the Twentieth Century around the
NE Antarctic Peninsula.

Past Air Temperatures:

It is possible to discern past air temperatures from ice cores. This can be related directly to
concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gasses preserved in the ice.
Snow precipitation over Antarctica is made mostly of H216O molecules (99.7%). There are
also rarer stable isotopes: H218O (0.2%) and HD16O (0.03%) (D is Deuterium, or 2H). Isotopic
concentrations are expressed in per mil δ units (δD and δ18O) with respect to Vienna Standard
Mean Ocean Water (V-SMOW). Past precipitation can be used to reconstruct past
palaeoclimatic temperatures. δD and δ18O is related to surface temperature at middle and high
latitudes. The relationship is consistent and linear over Antarctica.
Snow falls over Antarctica and is slowly converted to ice. Stable isotopes of oxygen
(Oxygen [16O, 18O] and hydrogen [D/H]) are trapped in the ice in ice cores. The stable
isotopes are measured in ice through a mass spectrometer. Measuring changing
concentrations of δD and δ18O through time in layers through an ice core provides a detailed
record of temperature change, going back hundreds of thousands of years.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

Figure-4: The figure above shows changes in ice temperature during the last
several glacial-interglacial cycles and comparison to changes in global ice
volume. The local temperature changes are from two sites in Antarctica and
are derived from deuterium isotopic measurements. The bottom plot shows
global ice volume derived from δ18O measurements on marine microfossils
(benthic foraminifera) from a composite of globally distributed marine
sediment cores.

Past Green House Gases:

The most important property of ice cores is that they are a direct archive of past
atmospheric gasses. Air is trapped at the base of the firn layer, and when the compacted snow
turns to ice, the air is trapped in bubbles. This transition normally occurs 50-100 m below the
surface. The offset between the age of the air and the age of the ice is accounted for with well-
understood models of firn densification and gas trapping. The air bubbles are extracted by
melting, crushing or grating the ice in a vacuum. This method provides detailed records of carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide going back over 650,000 years. Ice core records globally
agree on these levels, and they match instrumented measurements from the 1950s onwards,
confirming their reliability. Carbon dioxide measurements from older ice in Greenland is less
reliable, as meltwater layers have elevated carbon dioxide (CO2 is highly soluble in water). Older
records of carbon dioxide are therefore best taken from Antarctic ice cores.

Other Gasses:
Other major gases trapped in ice cores are O2, N2 and Ar. The stable isotope concentration
(δ O) in ice core records mirrors that of the ocean. Oceanic δ18O is related to global ice volume.
18

Variations of δ18O in O2 in ice core gasses are constant globally, making it a useful
chronostratigraphic marker. It’s another way to relate ice-core chronologies.

Dendrochronology:
 Dendrochronology is the study of climate change as recorded by tree growth rings.
 Provides high resolution data.
 It is a form of absolute dating that studies tree rings in order to form a chronological
sequence of a specific area or region.

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GEO–610: CLIMATE GEOLOGY MODULE–2; PART–1

 With the rotation of the earth around

the sun, the yearly seasons create
predictable and regular changes to
the climate, which in turn, affect the
growth of trees. Trees grow
horizontally as well as vertically
every year, creating a new outer
layer of sapwood with each growth
period. The thickness of this new
ring is highly dependent on climactic
changes.
 When a tree is felled, time stops, and
the chronological cross section is
exposed. Dendrochronologists
measure these rings and plot them to make a diagram of all the varying thicknesses. The
samples are then compared to others from different dates, and a proper sequence is created
for use in site interpretation and artifact analysis. This is called Crossdating.

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 Unfortunately, Dendrochronology is only useful in areas that have enough climactic

change to create such rings. Tropical regions don’t provide enough change for rings to
grow at a consistent rate, or even at all sometimes! The sapwood- outermost layer of the
wood- must also be intact in order to properly date it.

 Since counting a tree’s annual rings is a reliable way to estimate its age when records are
unavailable, this method has been adapted for living trees.
 An instrument called an increment borer extracts a small, pencil-sized piece of wood, or
core sample, from the trunk of the tree. A mini-auger is drilled by hand from the bark to the
center (pith) of the tree.
 The resulting core sample extracted from the hole displays the tree’s annual rings (or
increments of growth) at that point in the tree (see Fig). The tree then “pitches” the hole over,
filling the small cavity with resin.

Fig: A cross-section of a tree that has been bored, showing the displaced core sample.
 The standard location for taking increment core samples from a tree is diameter at breast
height (DBH). There are a number of reasons for doing so:-

 It is a comfortable height for most people to turn the handle of the increment borer,
and to extract the core sample.
 There is ample room for the borer handle to turn. (At the base of the tree, one would
constantly hit the ground or roots of the tree.)
 Brush and other vegetation do not have to be cut away in order to operate the borer.
 Generally there is room to avoid oddities in the tree’s trunk – branch whorls, cankers,
etc.

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 Age/diameter relationships can be developed.

Biological Proxies:
 Biological proxies include remains of living organisms, such as pollen, foraminifera
(single-celled, microscopic organisms that bear an external chambered shell), mollusks,
and ostracodes (small members of the Crustacean (shrimp) family that are encased by two
shells).
 Because the distribution of these organisms is controlled by temperature, moisture
availability, and other environmental factors, their presence in a sample allows scientists
to make inferences about the climate when the sample was deposited.
 Some examples of biological proxies are shown below:-
1. Pollen and Spores
 Pollen and spores are microscopic-sized structures that are part of the reproductive cycle
of plants.
 Pollen grains are produced by seed plants (such as flowering plants and conifers), and
spores are produced by more primitive vascular plants such as mosses and ferns.
 Fossil pollen and spores typically are dispersed from the source plant by wind, insects,
and other means.
 The oldest known land-plant spores are of Upper Ordovician age (~440 million years old).
 Pollen from seed plants dates to the Late Devonian (~365 million years old), with the first
definitive pollen from flowering plants found in Cretaceous rocks (at least 125 million
years old).
2. Plant Macrofossils:
 Plant macrofossils are plant remains large enough to be visible without a microscope,
including leaves, flowers, cones, and other plant fragments.
 When possible, scientists identify the plant species represented by the macrofossil.
 The oldest known plant macrofossils are liverworts found in Middle Ordovician rocks
(~475 million years old).
 The oldest vascular land plant was Cooksonia, preserved in from Middle Silurian (~425
million years old) rocks in Ireland. This plant represents a transitional form from the older
bryophytes to vascular plants such as ferns and seed plants.
3. Charcoal
 Charcoal is the carbon residue that persists after plants and other organic materials are
burnt. Fossil charcoal is preserved in sediments as fallout from fires burning in the
surrounding vegetation.
 Scientists use fossil charcoal to reconstruct changes in the frequency and magnitude of
fires in an ecosystem. As vegetation and climate change through time, the frequency,
intensity, and area of fires also changes.
4. Foraminifers
 Foraminifers are single-celled, microscopic organisms that live in water and bear an
external chambered shell
 Size: 100 µm to almost 20 cm.
 Distribution: marine environment.

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 Geological range: Cambrian to present day.

 Because foraminifer species have distinctive shell morphologies and environmental
requirements, scientists can use the composition of foraminifer assemblages to interpret
changes in water temperature and quality.
 The earliest known foraminifers were benthic forms that live on the ocean floor; these are
found in rocks as old as the early Cambrian (nearly 500 million years old).
 Planktic forms, which live in shallower water above the ocean floor, first occur in the
mid-Jurassic. Their rapid diversification makes them valuable paleoclimate proxies from
Cretaceous (~145.5 million years) to modern time.
5. Diatoms:
 Diatoms are unicellular, photosynthetic golden brown algae that form skeletons made of
silica.
 Size: 2 to 200 µm
 Distribution: marine and freshwater environment.
 Types: centric diatoms and pinnate diatoms.
 Geological range: lower cretaceous.
 Because diatoms are sensitive to changes in temperature, nutrients, salinity, and other
physical factors, they provide a means to reconstruct changes from both fresh-water and
marine sediments.
 The oldest diatoms are found in rocks dating to the Early Jurassic, about 190 million years
ago, and they first appeared in large numbers in Eocene sediments (45-40 million years
ago).

Geochemical Proxies:
o Stable isotopes.
o Elemental composition
o Organic biomarkers
o Biogenic silica.
1. Stable isotopes
 Isotopes are atoms of the same element, such as carbon (C) or oxygen (O), that have
different numbers of neutrons, giving them slightly different atomic weights.
 Ratios of stable isotopes from the same element can be measured from archive material to
infer a wide range of information about past climate.
 For example, the ratio of 18O to 16O in rain or snow is controlled by temperature, humidity
and atmospheric circulation.
 Any archive that faithfully preserves these isotopes can provide information about
changes in these climatic parameters.
 Because isotopes can provide climate information from every environment on earth where
there are archives of water or plant material, they represent a very useful proxy.
2. Elemental composition

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 Concentrations of chemical elements, such as iron, titanium, and phosphorus, in

sediments and other archives can be used to determine past changes in erosion, lake and
ocean productivity, and land use.
 Erosion intensity is sensitive to changes in precipitation and stream flow as well as
changes to the landscape such as deforestation.
 Changes in aquatic productivity may reflect precipitation-related fluctuations in nutrient
input from the land.
 Changes in land use, such as agriculture or urbanization, can cause deposition of elements
released from fertilizers, sewers, and other systems.
3. Biomarkers
 Organic biomarkers are molecular fossils derived from living organisms (such as plants),
and they can serve as proxies for other physical and chemical properties of their
environment (e.g., temperature, pH, salinity).
 Biomarkers can be preserved in sediments and rocks after the organism itself has
disintegrated, and measurements of their abundance can be used as a proxy for the past
distribution and abundance of the source organisms.
 Some biomarkers can be used to reconstruct past physical parameters such as temperature.
 For example, alkenones are biomarkers produced by marine algae called
coccolithophorids. The molecular structure of alkenones is related to the water
temperature in which the algae grew.

4. Biogenic Silica
 Biogenic silica, also known as opal, is one of the most important chemicals found in
marine and freshwater sediment.
 It is primarily created by microscopic algae called diatoms, but it also is produced by
other organisms, such as radiolarians and silicoflagellates.
 Measurements of opal in aquatic ecosystems are a proxy for biological productivity, or the
amount of biomass produced in the ecosystem.
 Productivity changes also can reflect factors such as temperature, salinity, and circulation.
 Because biogenic silica is so stable in sediments, it has been used to study past marine
ecosystem primary productivity in samples that are more than 48 million years old.

Summary of principal source of paleoclimatic proxy data used for paleoclimatic

reconstruction:

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Speleothems:
 Speleothems are mineral deposits formed from groundwater within underground caverns.
 Derived from the Greek words “spelaion” (cave) and “thema” (deposit).
 Stalagmites, stalactites, and other forms may be annually banded or contain compounds
that can be radiometrically dated.
 The thickness of these depositional layers or isotopic records can be used to determine
past climate conditions.
 The most commonly occurring minerals are calcite, aragonite, and gypsum although many
other minerals have been found in speleothems in minor amounts.
 Various Forms and Features of Speleothems are as follows:
a. Stalactites
 Stalactites hang from the ceiling of caves and are formed when water drips from
above, leaving behind mineral deposits.
 Have a cone-like shape, with water dripping slowly to add layers of minerals.
b. Stalagmites
 Grow upward from the cave floor, as the mineral-laden water drips onto the
ground and deposits minerals over time.
c. Column
 Created when a stalactite and a stalagmite grow together, forming a solid mineral
pillar that connects the cave ceiling to the floor.
d. Helictites
 Helictites are unusual and often delicate formations that appear to defy gravity.
 Grow in various directions, twisting and turning due to the capillary action of
water moving through porous rock.
e. Cave Bacon or Curtains
 Cave bacon or curtains are wavy, ribbon-like formations that often occur in layers
on cave walls.
 Result from alternating layers of mineral-rich water flow and dry periods.

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 Speleothems are valuable to scientists and cave enthusiasts as they can provide insights
into past climate conditions and the history of underground environments.

What Speleothems can tell about the Past Climates!

 Name of the proxy: Stable isotope ratios of carbonates in speleothems

 Type of proxy: Precipitation, atmospheric circulation, CO2 availability in soil, soil
productivity
 Paleoenvironment: Continental environments
 Period of time investigated: Present day to 10 million years
 Speleothems are inorganic carbonate deposits growing in caves that form from super-
saturated cave waters (with respect to CaCO3).
 Their analysis allows recovering aspects of past changes of the cave drip water
geochemical composition, which provides information on climate and environmental
variations above the cave.
 Different types of speleothems (e.g. flowstone, stalagmites) are widespread in karstic cave
environments, but stalagmites as well as flowstones are used mainly to reconstruct past
climates, because of a well-defined stratigraphic order.
 The major strengths of speleothems include their suitability for accurate age
determinations (U/Th for ages up to c. 500,000 years; U/Pb for ages older than 500,000
years).
 Moreover, the preservation of multiple quasi-independent climate and environmental
proxies enables the investigation of past climate changes on orbital to seasonal scale
worldwide.
 Some of the most used proxies of speleothem carbonates are the ratios between oxygen-18
and oxygen-16 (δ18O) and carbon-13 and carbon-12 (δ13C), which are stated as a relative
deviation to the Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite (VPDB) standard.

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 Speleothem δ18O records were employed to study the timing and climate of
glacial/interglacial transitions as well as Heinrich events of the late Pleistocene. Several
speleothem δ18O records from Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean revealed
Dansgaard-Oeschger (rapid climate fluctuations) oscillations and were used to precisely
date these climate events.
 Furthermore, speleothem δ18O records allow studying past changes of global Monsoon
systems as far back as 640 thousand years.
 Lately new efforts are undertaken by the speleothem community to map the speleothem
landscape in space and time to identify the current status of speleothem-based
paleoclimate reconstructions globally.

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