Talk:Paleoclimatology

Cryptozooic

What is this Cryptozooic business? What time system is this from? It's not GTS 89.

(SEWilco 07:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)) Cryptozoic is an obsolete term. Click on Cryptozoic and you'll find mention at the bottom of that page. (It was already on this page when I saw it...) This page needs a lot of cleaning. There is duplication with Earth's atmosphere which can be removed here, and instead put climate info. I think it would be better to build up all that timeline from research links, not start with a list.

(User:Terrell Larson 2005/04/28)I know cryptozoic is obsolete. It can be changed. It was my opinion when I wrote the original artical that it needed an interoduction and since the study of climate is closely allied to the life forms it supports, I chose to start from there.

Life flourishes in Cambrian

The section "Life flourishes in the Cambrian" doesn't belong here. My impression is that it contains nothing that isn't already well-told now at other entries, i.e. Cambrian. I think the opening should explain instead how there is climate before there is life, but that life and climate have evolved in synchronicity since the first biotic free atmospheric oxygen. Then follow with the tools of paleoclimatology, for which there's already a stub. --Wetman (total amateur)

(User:Terrell Larson 2005/04/28)This artical needs to be greatly expanded. I do not like the recent 2 million years in here. The reason is that this is more in the realm of contemporary climate change and that is being argued to death in the global warming and climate change areas. This artical should consern itself with the paleoclimate (which of course does include everything except perhaps the recent past.)

The thing I am worring about is that if we allow much mention of the recent past then we run the risk of all the global warming folks hopping in here and destroying this artical. They have a very short focus. In fact, if we contrast the encyclodeadia Britannics to the time since say the early Cambrian then we find each of the 19 books will represent about 30 million years. On this scale a page represents about 30,000 years and a single line about 200 years. Thus our global warming folks are looking at about the last 5-10 lines of the last page of the last book. Everything that has gone on before is irrelevant to them.

Tim Patteron from Carlton university has now published a report that the geological climate record does not show a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature changes. Specifically the ordovician atmosphere was 13x higher in CO2 than today and they went into an ice age. This shows any coupling between CO2 levels and global warming is weak. However when you try to tell this to the people who are writing the climate change artical - it falls on deaf ears. So I hope they stay away from here with their religeous wars.

The point I am trying to make is that the paleoclimate can tell us a lot about how the present cliamte operates. OTOH the present climate will not tell us anything about the paleoclimate. This point is totally lost on most of our climatology and global warming folks. They think 50,000 years is a long time and that 2 million years is an incredibly long time. Most of their data is less than 20,000 years old. In fact, many are trying to forecast from data which is less than 100 years old. It is mind boggling to think that people will beleive that you can make meaningful predictions of the climate of a planet more than 4.5 billion years old from data collected over a few hundred years. They simply have no concept of the geological time scale. Since they ignore the evidence in the rocks and fossils their ideas are meaningless and not much different than the creationists who think God created the earth about 5,000 years ago. Well - maybe he did - and if so then he created 4.5 billion years of the earth's history at the same time!

I disagree with you here. The conditions in many respects are completely different in ordovician, and the uncertainty is much higher for paleoclimate reconstructions that far before present. And we try to predict the mere 100 years of future, not million years. For these reasons, focussing at climate history at scales of 100s of years, maybe few orders of magnitude more, makes perfect sense to me. Not to mention, of course, that basic physical principles (as well as astrophysical evidence) reveal the certain CO2 impact on temperatures. --134.76.233.140 (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Cyanobacteria and Archaea

If the Banded_iron_formation are the product of photosythetic oxygenic cyanobacteria and Archaea may be as old as 3.8Ga, the timeline at the end of the Paleoclimatology page should be updated to reflect this. Currently, only bacteria are listed at 3.45 Ga.

Phanerozoic Climate and cosmic ray flux?

How controversial is the following statement, which currently is in the article?:

"Qualitatively, the Earth's climate was varied between conditions that support large-scale continental glaciation and those which are extensively tropical and lack permanent ice caps even at the poles. The time scale for this variation is roughly 140 million years and may be related to Earth's motion into and out of galactic spiral arms (Veizer and Shaviv 2003)..."

Clicking on the first chart links to cites to the following:

• Shaviv, N. and Veizer, J. (2003) Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate? GSA Today July 2003, volume 13, number 7, pages 4-10. <http://www.gsajournals.org/gsaonline/?request=get-document&issn=1052-5173&volume=013&issue=07&page=0004>

• Royer, Dana L. and Robert A. Berner, Isabel P. Montañez, Neil J. Tabor, David J. Beerling (2004) CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate GSA Today July 2004, volume 14, number 3, pages 4-10. <http://www.gsajournals.org/gsaonline/?request=get-document&issn=1052-5173&volume=014&issue=03&page=0004>

-- and the second article appears to contradict/refute, or at least substantially qualify, the first...

So, if the above quote from the article is controversial shouldn't this be indicated? Moreso than just the current "may be" qualifier... lots of folks feeling very passionate about "global warming" and "greenhouse gases", nowadays, maximum precision would seem to be a good idea...

I'll put both article cites & links into the bibliography, here.

--Kessler 20:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

V+S's stuff is definitely controversial; see various RealClimate postings William M. Connolley 20:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with William Connolley that Shaviv's work is highly controversial. This is not necessarily a problem in itself. However, since Wikipedia should not promote a certain point-of-view, this whole paragraph is biased in the way that it only presents a minority of the knowledge of the astrophysics/climatology community. Another point is that, reading Shaviv's work, it is still quite immature in the sense that it is a small group of scientists trying to establish a whole set of causalities - work which would take the larger 'concensus' community shorter time. For example, in comparing several of Shaviv's papers it becomes clear that the spiral arm passage frequency estimates noted therein seem inconsistent. In conclusion, I think this paragraph needs more references and/or removal of the statements related to Shaviv & Veizer. I am a scientist in complex systems and have no interest in taking side in the discussion, but it is clear that Shaviv & Veizer is receiving too much attention to results which are, most likely, inaccurate. (Plogp (talk) 13:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC))

I asssume that you both basically refer to realclimate org. I suggest to take into account shavivs either scientific and (with regard to a beer to peer connection of Rahmstorf and Jahnke in Potsdam) sort of personal rebuttal on [1].

One has to see that Shavivs papers - if one accepts the hypothesis - would explain the young faint sun paradoxon and the course of paleoclimate from start till the last ice ages, as displayed in the Schönfeld pic I copied downstairs. Thats a bold one, at least one William (von Ockham) would like it and it has sparked either controversy and more research in different fields, to name only Scherer et al. comprehensive (as well from a geochemist perspective) study 2007 in Space Science Reviews 2007.

The 2007 IPCC reports strongly attribute a major role of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the ongoing global warming, but as "different climate changes in the past had different causes" a driving role of Carbon dioxide in the geological past is not purported. Sun has lead the dance with a quite active earth in the past.

Empiric evidence of a stronger solar influence is acknowledged by 2007 IPCC papers. Besides Co2 Climate sensitivity margin is still wide, the lab value around 1.2, the attributed (based on leveraging water vapour) between 1.5 and 6.2, best guesses around 3. IMHO there is leeway for solar influence - which might interact with CRF - or CRF itself

Compared to 2001 the early palaeozoic ice age (pre 400 with high CO2) is left out in the 2007 IPCC scientific base (similar to the whole dispute Royer Veizer, not to metion Rahmstorf editorial), the weaker Ice age around 150 as well. Hmmm. The fit in the last 60 M years doesnt hold too much water. To say it short, the IPCC is and has to be rather cautious about giving CO2 a drivers role in the geological past, starting with Ice ages already, not to speak of the previous eons. The sharp controversy William mentiones was especially about the puported role in industrial times versus the carbon dioxide

A William Connolly quote on his disk "Geologists are trained to look at long time scales. But those time scales are irrelevant to current change. It also makes the geologists tend to feel left out, overlooked and hence bitter." may refer to some aspects to the dispute ;) as well. --Polentario (talk) 03:18, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Real life sources about the palaoclimate have been added, I used structure and evidence of the german article 'history of the atmosphere' to get more form in it

Most of the points about concentrations have been taken out tof the Scosese Web log, I would be careful with using them, as well with regard to GA

I do not assume that the greenhouse controversy is the focus of this lemma, so used a wording giving both parties the time span were they fit best and put the best and primary available references in footnotes BR --Polentario (talk) 23:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Rm layer stuff

I took out:

The ice in glaciers has hardened into an identifiable pattern, with each year leaving a distinct layer in an ice core. It is estimated that the polar ice caps have 100,000 of these layers or more.

This is definitely wrong. Whether or not your get an identifiable yearly layer depends on the accumumation rate and conditions. What is layer-counted is more often isotope/chemical records not anything visible. Layer counting only goes back ?50kyr?, and that only at some sites (greenland). The 100k layers sat oddly with the next sentence which says (correctly) that cores go back 800kyr.

This needs xref to ice core and proxy (climate) and other stuff William M. Connolley 20:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Will GA ever be an option?

Once inline references are placed within the article and an adequate lead is placed at the top, the article will be ready for GA. It seems to fit the other criteria. Thegreatdr 18:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Removal of CRF description

The section on CRF as a possible driver has been unilaterally removed with the edit summary this section is unacceptable as-is: you cannot present one hypothesis as the leading theory. I fail to see that it is doing that, it is listed as one driver amongst many in the "controlling factors" section, but admittedly the only one in that time frame. It is clearly presented in NPOV terms as just a hypothesis and is properly referenced. Indeed, it was the only driver in the whole section that was referenced at all, and at the time I put it in, that was 80% of all the references in the entire article. If there are competing theories, the article should be balanced with the alternatives, blanking the whole is not constructive. I feel a little offended that my efforts here have been treated as if it was some passing vandalism of no consequence instead of engaging in debate. SpinningSpark 23:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Basically its a great hypothesis, since it explains a lot of unsolved issues, one dieagrma in Shavivs 'Paradox' paper shows the whole course of climate during the last 4,5 Billion years

Veizers first papers 1976 were used for the first suggested solution of the faint sun paradox btw and he has provided further geochimical evidence

However you have to understand that it has sparked -as a siide effect - controversy, especially in the global warming debate and you shouldn jump in the middle of astronomical mechanics when the CRF mechanism hasnt been explained / is still object to denial. BR --Polentario (talk) 01:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

So if I understand this correctly, the objection is that there has been no causal link established between CRF and climate whereas the other drivers have an understood mechanism. The solution then, is to say in the article that it is based on statistical correlation only (although one possible mechanism from the paper is already mentioned). The paper of Royer et al could also be referenced as this disputes the degree of correlation. Of course, saying all this will make the section longer and give it more prominence.

I am a bit confused how this is getting caught up in the global warming debate. The CRF cycle period is of the order of hundreds of millions of years but the anthropogenic global warming timescale is a couple of centuries. Anyone who believes that one can explain the other is either an idiot or a politician. in any case the deleted text did not try and make this connection in any way so that should not be an argument against its inclusion. SpinningSpark 07:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I have copied the post below from my talk page so it is opened up for debate. I hope Polentario does not mind.SpinningSpark 20:49, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

What is your opinion about the paläoclimatolgy article now? You have an interesting way to argue for your point and work and avoid conflict, I appreciate that very much. If were talking about pictures, I would love to have the 2003 Shaviv diagram (in [2]) combined with a scheme using the overall climate evolution in File:Erdgeschichte.jpg. It would be a very strong illustration of the overall view, not only the phanerozoic you already have done. What you think? BR --Polentario (talk) 00:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I have done some copyediting on it to improve the English. Please check that I have not caused any factual errors. The main thing I would comment on is that the faint young sun pararox/solar minimum issue should be in the next section (very long term) since the section it is in now is only supposed to be up to the one billion years scale. I can certainly produce a diagram in SVG along the lines you suggest, but I would worry that overlaying the Shaviv data on something else could amount to WP:OR synthesis. I would prefer to take all the data points just from Shaviv so that the data can be attributed. SpinningSpark 20:49, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to move the section, I wouldnt mind

I think one should mark the grey band / Display of ice ages in Shavivs figure more outspoken and strongly indicate that the it was warm and cozy from very early.

Its not OR since thats already part of the diagram, however not as evident as in the Schönwiese pic. A major Cold one at 2,4 Giga BP and the Ice age / Warm age cycles start as late as 950 Million BP is established text book stuff.

Shavivs basic calculations cover the basic trend, the meteorite evidence is in line with some of the ice age / hot age cycles within the reach of certainity. --Polentario (talk) 09:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem as I see it is that to divide the Shaviv diagram arbitrarily into warm and cold epochs would be to insuate something into the diagram that Shaviv has not specifically said. Besides which, the shape of the curve in Shaviv, although generally the same form as the Erdgeschichte diagram, deviates quite markedly. Any attempt to simplistically place a horizontal line on the Shaviv diagram does not result in the same periods of icy versus warm climate as shown on Erdgeschichte. I could create a similar English diagram in SVG rather than use the Shaviv data, but what is its source? Is this book the source? Would that give you what you want? SpinningSpark 21:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorrym, didnt see your entry. Yes Schönwiese is the source, but Shaviv has some climate indications in his diagram as well. I'd prefer to show it more explicite. BR --Polentario (talk) 14:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

This conversation seems to have lapsed. Maybe I got busy. Time to re-start it I suppose. I said this section is unacceptable as-is: you cannot present one hypothesis as the leading theory [3]. SS said: "I fail to see that it is doing that" but I fear it is all too obvious why it is doing that: it is presented, as I said, as the leading, nay *only* explanation, and this is unacceptable William M. Connolley (talk) 20:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

You really havn't been paying attention at all have you? The wording was substantially altered and added to to try and address your concerns. You have returned after 3 months and just deleted the lot again without joining in the discussion at all. THAT is unacceptable. As I said above, if there are other theories, lets add them, if what I have written is biased, lets edit the bias out. Wholesale deletion without discussion just is not on. I am going to restore this, you deleted it AFTER you stated in an edit summary that you were going to post on the talk page. SpinningSpark 21:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I'm a complete bozo and just don't know what I'm doing. All well, I'll do my best to keep up with your superior intellect. So: I removed the text as I read it today: as I said, it was unacceptably biased. No, you can't keep the horribly biased text whilst waiting for it to be unbiased William M. Connolley (talk) 22:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Are you not prepared to help work on this at all? What I am asking is will you collaborate rather than just deleting? You may not believe me, but I really do not have any bias here or POV I wish to insert. SpinningSpark 22:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm quite happy to collaborate William M. Connolley (talk) 08:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

So could you start by explaining what you think would make this text acceptable? From my point of view I am not pushing galactic cycles as the only explanation of temperature change. I have inserted it as one of many possible drivers. While it is true that this is the only one in the 10^8 time range, that is just coincidental, I organised the "drivers" section by increasing time scale to try and put some structure on it, not to push some POV. I am not deliberately excluding any other notable proposals, it is simply that I do not know of any. Do you? As for the diagram you claim is inaccurate, well it accurately reflects Shaviv and Veizer's paper, which is all that it is claiming to be. You say you are willing to collaborate, but so far all I have from you is total deletion, no additions, no improvements, no attempt to edit out the POV you think is there. Attempts were made after your first deletion to address your concerns as you can see from the discussion above, but it is quite difficult to guess your thinking if you do not take part in the discussion. It is particularly galling that this piece was well referenced, which is more than you can say for most of the rest of the article. (edit) Oh , and I am not proposing keeping horribly biased text whilst waiting for it to be unbiased, I am proposing fixing it right now. SpinningSpark 09:25, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The diag (and the text) accurately reflects S+V's paper. But that isn't good enough. It also has to accurately reflect the balance of opinion, which is rather different. If we can agree that is true, I can try to find some more balance. Or you can William M. Connolley (talk) 10:10, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the article as a whole should reflect mainstream academic opinion. As long as it is made clear that the diagram represents what S&V are saying, and no more, there is no reason not to include it. I am aware of the criticism in the paper of Royer mentioned above. My reading of that paper is that Royer shows a great deal of dislike for the S&V theory but stops short of outright rejection. He end up saying that there is some correlation with CRF, but rather less than S&V claim. He makes no criticism of S&Vs claimed CRF variation, and in fact uses the S&V CRF data in his own revised graph. Perhaps Royers version of the graph could be shown for balance? SpinningSpark 10:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Peer Review

Is it time to drop the requirement that papers that are cited by this article be peer reviewed. After all it the AGW crowd is willing to, “redefine what the peer-review literature is” to keep out the work of skeptics, no matter how well researched, then the requirement for peer review is just a POV requirement. 173.52.9.63 (talk) 17:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

NOAA link

I disagree with this reversion. I thought the IP was right to change the link to the NOAA paleoclimatology portal page. This has links to pages with a wealth of information on various sub-topics such as paleo fires, corals, loess and much more not covered in our article, or only briefly. It makes sense to link to the home page of a site, besides which, the current page linked has a very annoying gallery slide show. There is an alternative "What is paleoclimatology" page on the site which is much more informative, but I would still be in favour of the portal page as both these sub-pages are easily reached from the home page. SpinningSpark 20:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

On second look, you have a good point; I will self-revert, Awickert (talk) 22:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Why not link to them both? -Atmoz (talk) 22:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, because there is no need, the NOAA site has good navigation links, and there is a general principle to keep external links to a minimum. SpinningSpark 01:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Roman Warm Period

Why does this article not mention the Roman Warm Period? There are plenty of references to a Roman Warm Period in the peer reviewed literature, e.g. McDermott et al. 2001, Science. Alex Harvey (talk) 01:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

New correlation discovered by geologist Lorraine Lisiecki

In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of the Earth's orbital cycle to changes in the Earth's climate. The finding is reported in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. [4] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian Pearson (talk • contribs)

Why are you bolding this? The "discovery" you mention is basically Milankovitch cycles, nothing really new there. What appears to be new is a sensitivity estimation. This would be interesting - but afaikt not very accurate, as many other factors influence climate on that long a scale (geological changes). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You are right, but it does add concrete evidence.Brian Pearson (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Earth orbit

Earth orbit is decaying 20m/yr (measured relativistic decay). If there were no gas giants in the vicinity of the Sun when Earth was condensed, then the Earth orbit was at its' beginning there where Mars is now. That is roughly 200 million km from the Sun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.77.42.100 (talk) 07:53, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

There are two options:

1. Our stellar models are wrong and the Sun actually fades with time.

2. Our solar system had (as we see with other newly discovered star systems) one or more heavy planets close to the Sun, that have since in-spiraled into the Sun. These giant planets could perhaps allow for Earth orbit to be closer to the Sun as it is now, billions of years ago.

"Planet's timeline" section comment

I'm not sure the bulky geologic timescale illo really adds much to this section -- I hadn't looked at this article in awhile, and it confused me for a moment. Do we really need it here? TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:09, 12 June 2011 (UTC), Consulting Geologist, Arizona and New Mexico (USA)

Removed and retitled section. Does that work? Vsmith (talk) 21:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Yup, much cleaner. Thanks! Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 22:46, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Effect of minor planets on Earth's orbit

"Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a new study... [which] found that close encounters among these bodies lead to strong chaotic behavior of their orbits, as well as of the Earth's eccentricity. This means, in particular, that the Earth's past orbit cannot be reconstructed beyond 60 million years.... This means that the Earth's eccentricity, which affects the large climatic variations on its surface, cannot be traced back more than 60 million years ago. This is indeed bad news for Paleoclimate studies." [5] at PhysOrg.com. Also see Climate change studies vexed by Vesta.

If I'm reading this correctly, this discovery would only seriously affect paleoclimate studies of times before 60 mybp. And it's always best to wait awhile before including new results in the article. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:06, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Graph is misleading

Regarding the paleoclimatological history graph, the X axis is labeled but nevertheless the changes in scale are misleading. Cursory viewing of the graph, or even examination, doesn't immediately reveal that the far-left edge covers 10^6 more time per linear unit than the right edge. I'm not a regular wiki editor, nor a professional media editor but have rescaled this image with photoshop to represent a consistent time-span across the x-axis. Not sure how to upload to wikimedia, so here's the link. http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6025/allpalaeotempsscaled.png

Styopa (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The "changing x scale" seems obvious on close examination. Two reasons: first more data points in more recent time and more interest to to current human environment. Your "constant scale" diagram will either be too large or too cluttered in recent millenia for readability. Perhaps an explanatory note to address your concerns for the users who don't see the changing scale as obvious. Vsmith (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with that. A uniform scale would not be an improvement. SpinningSpark 22:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)