Myriad Ways to Reconstruct Past Climate Erik Stokstad

Supplementary Material

How fast can climate change? How drastic are the swings? What parts of the world will be hit with typhoons or drought? To answer questions like these, climate scientists look at records of past climate. Direct measurements, such as thermometer records, extend back about 2 centuries. Humans have also noted aspects of climate change for about 1000 years in historical records of cherry blossoms in Japan and grape harvests in Europe, and Egyptian hieroglyphs tell of 4000-year-old droughts. For older evidence of past climate--such as the so-called Last Glacial Maximum depicted on this map, roughly 20,000 years ago--a wide variety of records span different times and areas. This illustration (available in PDF)presents a sample of them and their uses. Further information can be found at www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo and gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov.