Determining Past Climate Change - Ocean Floor Sediments

  • Scientists have employed many methods to piece together the past climatic record

  • One such method is to look at sediments on the ocean floor

  • Research vessels produce sediment profiles from the bottom of the ocean

  • the sediment contains calcium carbonate shells from organisms that have lived near the earth's surface in the past

  • the type of calcium carbonate shell can tell you something about temperature since some live only within narrow temperature ranges.

image adopted from The Amosphere by Lutgens and Tarbuck, © 1998 by Prentice-Hall, Inc