Determining Past Climate Change - Dendrochronology

• one ring per year
• distance between tree rings can tell you something about temperature and moisture fluctuations related to climatic variability

Other data offering clues about our past climate:

• lake-bottom sediment and soil deposits
• pollen in deep ice caves, soil deposits, and sea sediments
• geologic evidence is ancient coal beds, sand dunes, and fossils
• documents concerning droughts, floods, and crop yields
• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html

Knowledge on past climate is still incomplete....., but what do we know from the aforementioned data sources?????

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