Кеңірген физикалық ерекшеліктер арқылы өткен климат жағдайларын реконструкциялау

Preserved physical characteristics allowing reconstruction of past climatic conditions

In the study of past climates ("paleoclimatology"), climate proxies are preserved physical characteristics of the past that stand in for direct meteorological measurements and enable scientists to reconstruct the climatic conditions over a longer fraction of the Earth's history. Reliable global records of climate only began in the 1880s, and proxies provide the only means for scientists to determine climatic patterns before record keeping began. A large number of climate proxies have been studied from a variety of geologic contexts. Examples of proxies include stable isotope measurements from ice cores, growth rates in tree rings, species composition of sub fossil pollen in lake sediment or foraminifera in ocean sediments, temperature profiles of boreholes, and stable isotopes and mineralogy of corals and carbonate speleothems. In each case, the proxy indicator has been influenced by a particular seasonal climate parameter (e. g., summer temperature or monsoon intensity) at the time in which they were laid down or grew. Interpretation of climate proxies requires a range of ancillary studies, including calibration of the sensitivity of the proxy to climate and cross verification among proxy indicators. Proxies can be combined to produce temperature reconstructions longer than the instrumental temperature record and can inform discussions of global warming and climate history. The geographic distribution of proxy records, just like the instrumental record, is not at all uniform, with more records in the northern hemisphere.

In science, it is sometimes necessary to study a variable which cannot be measured directly. This can be done by "proxy methods," in which a variable which correlates with the variable of interest is measured, and then used to infer the value of the variable of interest. Proxy methods are of particular use in the study of the past climate, beyond times when direct measurements of temperatures are available. Most proxy records have to be calibrated against independent temperature measurements, or against a more directly calibrated proxy, during their period of overlap to estimate the relationship between temperature and the proxy. The longer history of the proxy is then used to reconstruct temperature from earlier periods.

Ice cores are cylindrical samples from within ice sheets in the Greenland, Antarctic, and North American regions. First attempts of extraction occurred in 1956 as part of the International Geophysical Year. As original means of extraction, the U. S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory used an 80 feet (24 m) long modified electrodrill in 1968 at Camp Century, Greenland, and Byrd Station, Antarctica. Their machinery could drill through of ice in 40–50 minutes. From 1300 to 3000 feet (914 m) in depth, core samples were in diameter and 10 to 20 feet (6 m) long. Deeper samples of 15 to 20 feet (6 m) long were not uncommon. Every subsequent drilling team improves their method with each new effort.

The ratio between the 16O and 18O water molecule isotopologues in an ice core helps determine past temperatures and snow accumulations. In addition to oxygen isotopes, water contains hydrogen isotopes – 1H and 2H, usually referred to as H and D (for deuterium) – that are also used for temperature proxies. Normally, ice cores from Greenland are analyzed for δ18O and those from Antarctica for δ deuterium. Those cores that analyze for both show a lack of agreement. (In the figure, δ18O is for the trapped air, not the ice. δD is for the ice.) Air bubbles in the ice, which contain trapped greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, are also helpful in determining past climate changes. Ice cores in Antarctica can reveal the climate records for the past 650,000 years. In the case of mean annual precipitation reconstructions, some researchers believe taphonomic processes cause smaller leaves to be overrepresented in the fossil record, which can bias reconstructions. However, recent research suggests that the leaf fossil record may not be significantly biased toward small leaves. New approaches retrieve data such as content of past atmospheres from fossil leaf stomata and isotope composition, measuring cellular CO2 concentrations. A 2014 study was able to use the carbon 13 isotope ratios to estimate the CO2 amounts of the past 400 million years, the findings hint at a higher climate sensitivity to CO2 concentrations.

Borehole temperatures are used as temperature proxies. Since heat transfer through the ground is slow, temperature measurements at a series of different depths down the borehole, adjusted for the effect of rising heat from inside the Earth, can be "inverted" (a mathematical formula to solve matrix equations) to produce a non unique series of surface temperature values. The solution is "non unique" because there are multiple possible surface temperature reconstructions that can produce the same borehole temperature profile. In addition, due to physical limitations, the reconstructions are inevitably "smeared", and become more smeared further back in time. When reconstructing temperatures around 1500 AD, boreholes have a temporal resolution of a few centuries. At the start of the 20th century, their resolution is a few decades; hence they do not provide a useful check on the instrumental temperature record. However, they are broadly comparable. Boreholes have a great advantage over many other proxies in that no calibration is required: they are actual temperatures. However, they record surface temperature not the near surface temperature (1.5 meter) used for most "surface" weather observations. These can differ substantially under extreme conditions or when there is surface snow. In practice the effect on borehole temperature is believed to be generally small. A second source of error is contamination of the well by groundwater may affect the temperatures, since the water "carries" more modern temperatures with it. This effect is believed to be generally small, and more applicable at very humid sites. Borehole temperatures in Greenland were responsible for an important revision to the isotopic temperature reconstruction, revealing that the former assumption that "spatial slope equals temporal slope" was incorrect.

Ocean coral skeletal rings, or bands, also share paleoclimatological information, similarly to tree rings. In 2002, a report was published on the findings of Drs. Lisa Greer and Peter Swart, associates of University of Miami at the time, in regard to stable oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of coral. Cooler temperatures tend to cause coral to use heavier isotopes in its structure, while warmer temperatures result in more normal oxygen isotopes being built into the coral structure. Denser water salinity also tends to contain the heavier isotope. Greer's coral sample from the Atlantic Ocean was taken in 1994 and dated back to 1935. Greer recalls her conclusions, "When we look at the averaged annual data from 1935 to about 1994, we see it has the shape of a sine wave. It is periodic and has a significant pattern of oxygen isotope composition that has a peak at about every twelve to fifteen years." Surface water temperatures have coincided by also peaking every twelve and a half years. However, since recording this temperature has only been practiced for the last fifty years, correlation between recorded water temperature and coral structure can only be drawn so far back.

Pollen can be found in sediments. Plants produce pollen in large quantities and it is extremely resistant to decay. It is possible to identify a plant species from its pollen grain. The identified plant community of the area at the relative time from that sediment layer, will provide information about the climatic condition. The abundance of pollen of a given vegetation period or year depends partly on the weather conditions of the previous months, hence pollen density provides information on short term climatic conditions. The study of prehistoric pollen is palynology.

Dinoflagellates occur in most aquatic environments and during their life cycle, some species produce highly resistant organic walled cysts for a dormancy period when environmental conditions are not appropriate for growth. Their living depth is relatively shallow (dependent upon light penetration), and closely coupled to diatoms on which they feed. Their distribution patterns in surface waters are closely related to physical characteristics of the water bodies, and nearshore assemblages can also be distinguished from oceanic assemblages. The distribution of dinocysts in sediments has been relatively well documented and has contributed to understanding the average sea surface conditions that determine the distribution pattern and abundances of the taxa Several studies, including and have compiled box and gravity cores in the North Pacific analyzing them for palynological content to determine the distribution of dinocysts and their relationships with sea surface temperature, salinity, productivity and upwelling. Similarly, and use a box core at 576.5 m of water depth from 1992 in the central Santa Barbara Basin to determine oceanographic and climatic changes during the past 40 kyr in the area.

A novel climate proxy obtained from peat (lignites, ancient peat) and soils, membrane lipids known as glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) is helping to study paleo environmental factors, which control relative distribution of differently branched GDGT isomers. The study authors note, "These branched membrane lipids are produced by an as yet unknown group of anaerobic soil bacteria." as of 2018, there is a decade of research demonstrating that in mineral soils the degree of methylation of bacteria (brGDGTs), helps to calculate mean annual air temperatures. This proxy method was used to study the climate of the early Palaeogene, at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, and researchers found that annual air temperatures, over land and at mid latitude, averaged about 23–29 °C (± 4.7 °C), which is 5–10 °C higher than most previous findings.

The skill of algorithms used to combine proxy records into an overall hemispheric temperature reconstruction may be tested using a technique known as "pseudoproxies". In this method, output from a climate model is sampled at locations corresponding to the known proxy network, and the temperature record produced is compared to the (known) overall temperature of the model.