73 articles
4.2 kiloyear event
The 4.2 kiloyear event was an abrupt episode of aridification around 2200 BCE that brought decades-long drought from the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia to India, and defines the Meghalayan Age.
8.2 kiloyear event
The 8.2 kiloyear event was an abrupt cooling of the Northern Hemisphere about 8,200 years ago, triggered when the drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz-Ojibway slowed the Atlantic overturning circulation.
African humid period
The African humid period, also called the Green Sahara, was a wet interval from about 14,800 to 5,500 years ago when the Sahara supported grasslands and lakes.
Bølling–Allerød interstadial
The Bølling–Allerød interstadial was a warm interval of the last deglaciation, beginning about 14,700 years ago and ending with the cold Younger Dryas about 12,900 years ago.
Bond events
Bond events are proposed quasi-periodic cold episodes during the Holocene, identified by Gerard Bond and colleagues in North Atlantic sediments as pulses of ice-rafted debris.
Carnian pluvial episode
The Carnian pluvial episode, or Carnian pluvial event, was an interval of warming and increased rainfall in the Late Triassic, about 234 to 232 million years ago.
Clathrate gun hypothesis
The clathrate gun hypothesis, also known as the Big Burp Theory, proposes that abrupt warming episodes, including the PETM, were triggered by methane released from seafloor clathrate hydrates.
Climate field reconstruction
Climate field reconstruction is the statistical estimation of past, spatially resolved climate variables, such as surface temperature, from sparse natural archives called proxies, first produced in the 1970s.
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was the cluster of famines, plague, war, revolt, and religious upheaval that struck Europe from 1315 to the mid-1400s.
Dansgaard–Oeschger event
A Dansgaard–Oeschger event (D-O event), named for Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, is one of about 25 abrupt millennial-scale climate oscillations of the last glacial period.
Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, is the science of dating annual growth rings in wood to their exact calendar year. It dates artifacts and reconstructs past climate and fire history.
Dendroclimatology
Dendroclimatology is the science of reconstructing past climate from the annual growth rings of trees, using ring width, wood density, and isotopes to estimate past temperature and precipitation.
Deuterium excess
Deuterium excess, or d-excess, is a parameter in stable water isotope analysis, defined by Dansgaard in 1964, that measures deviation from the global meteoric water line.
Dome Fuji Station
Dome Fuji Station (ドームふじ基地), Japanese inland Antarctic station at 77°19'S, 39°42'E, 3,810 m in Dronning Maud Land; established 1995 for deep ice-core drilling, producing cores to 720,000 years; year-round operations suspended.
East Greenland Ice-core Project
The East Greenland Ice-core Project, known as EastGRIP, drilled a 2,670-meter ice core through the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, the first deep core through a fast-flowing ice stream.
European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica
The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) was a European scientific program that drilled deep ice cores in East Antarctica between 1996 and the mid-2000s.
Evolution of the Asian monsoon
The evolution of the Asian monsoon is its geological history over the past 55 million years, with onset ages debated from about 55 to 22 Ma.
Faint young Sun paradox
The faint young Sun paradox is the conflict between a Sun 20 to 25% fainter on early Earth and geological evidence that liquid water existed.
Foraminifera in paleoclimatology
Foraminifera in paleoclimatology is the study of foraminiferal shells in seafloor sediments, whose oxygen isotope, trace metal, and assemblage signatures reconstruct past ocean temperature, ice volume, and salinity.
Geologic temperature record
The geologic temperature record reconstructs past surface and water temperatures from physical, chemical, and biological proxies in rocks, sediments, and ice, reaching back millions of years before thermometers.
GISP2
GISP2, short for Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2, was a US ice drilling project that recovered a 3053 m core through the full Greenland Ice Sheet in 1993.
Glacial period
A glacial period, also called a glaciation, is a colder interval within an ice age when continental ice sheets expand; the most recent ended about 11,500 years ago.
Great Oxidation Event
The Great Oxidation Event, also known as the Oxygen Catastrophe, began roughly 2.4 billion years ago, when oxygen produced by photosynthetic microbes first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere and oceans, permanently changing the planet's surface.
Greenhouse and icehouse Earth
Greenhouse and icehouse Earth are Earth's two recurring climate states, defined by polar ice, alternating for over 2.5 billion years; Earth is now in an icehouse state.
Greenland Ice Core Project
The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) was a European project that drilled a 3,029-meter ice core to bedrock at Summit, Greenland, between 1989 and 1992, covering 250,000 years of climate.
Heinrich events
Heinrich events are episodes of massive iceberg discharge into the North Atlantic during the last glacial period, named for Hartmut Heinrich, who documented their sediment layers in 1988.
Historical climatology
Historical climatology is the study of past climate using documentary evidence such as annals, diaries, and ship logbooks, pioneered by Hubert H. Lamb and complementing natural proxies like tree rings.
Huronian glaciation
The Huronian glaciation, or Makganyene glaciation, was a series of ice ages between about 2.4 and 2.1 billion years ago, the first widespread glaciation in Earth's history.
Hypsithermal
The Hypsithermal, also known as the Altithermal or Holocene Climatic Optimum, was a warm interval of the mid-Holocene, about 9000 to 5000 years ago, caused by orbital forcing.
Ice age
An ice age is a long interval of Earth history when continental ice sheets exist at least at the poles. Earth is currently in one, the Late Cenozoic Ice Age.