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To: cogitator

Another question, as you seem to have some knowledge on the subject. Are the degrees and ppm on your two charts equivalent to the same figures on the chart in the thread? Or are they measuring different things--eg one is measuring average temperature in antarctica and another on the equator or some such difference?


65 posted on 04/24/2006 7:07:22 PM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: ModelBreaker
Are the degrees and ppm on your two charts equivalent to the same figures on the chart in the thread? Or are they measuring different things--eg one is measuring average temperature in antarctica and another on the equator or some such difference?

Degrees and ppm are the "same thing" on both charts, but there is a definite caveat. What I would call "deep time" paleotemperatures are usually based on a compilation of oxygen-18 measurements from ocean sediment cores. The O18/O16 ratio is a paleothermometer, and the ratio is derived from oxygen atoms in biogenic calcium carbonate in sediments. (Biogenic means produced by living things, so these are usually carbonate plankton). Because the plankton grab O (in carbonate ion) from the oceans to make their shells, they capture the existing 018/016 ratio at the time. This is a paloeothermometer because the colder the seawater gets, the more O18 it will have.

The ice cores are from Antarctica, and paleotemperatures are determined the same way, but this time the O18/O16 is from the actual ice (H2O) formed in the atmosphere. This is more direct, but it's also more regionally specific for Antarctica. The cores also have much better time resolution, but over millions of years the ocean sediment cores are sufficient for geological climate research.

Before worrying too much about the regional specificity of Antarctic temperatures, note that the ice cores reliably record global climate changes, some very specific. One very interesting one is the "8200 year spike", a quick up-down recently attributed to the released of flood water from the remnant glacial lakes in Canada into the North Atlantic. You can see that on the second chart I posted. Even though the main effects were in the North Atlantic and Northern Hemisphere, the Antarctic cores caught the resulting short temperature aberration.

67 posted on 04/25/2006 8:38:03 AM PDT by cogitator
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