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What is Paleoclimatology?
Paleoclimatology
is the study of climate prior to the widespread availability of records
of temperature, precipitation and other instrumental data. NOAA is particularly
interested in the last few thousand years because this is the best dated,
best sampled part of the past climatic record and can help us establish
the range of natural climatic variability in a period prior to global-scale
human influence.
Environmental recorders are
used to estimate past climatic conditions and thus extend our understanding
far beyond the 100+ year instrumental record. "Proxy"
records of climate have been preserved in tree rings, locked in the skeletons
of tropical coral reefs, extracted as ice cores from glaciers and ice
caps, and buried in laminated sediments from lakes and the ocean.
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