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Science Friday: How The Past Hints About Our Climate’s Future

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In past blog posts I have discussed the use of proxy data to determine temperatures and precipitation from the past. Tree rings can go back hundreds of years, ice cores can go back thousands to 100,000 years or more, and other records like pollen in lake deposits can also provide clues to climate at particular places. But longer records are harder to find, so some new research on fossils shows that they can also be used to help figure out temperatures millions of years ago. This audio presentation from Science Friday discusses some new research on the use of these proxy data. You can listen to it (it’s about 17 minutes long) at https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/geologic-past-climate-future/.

The find dates to about 2-3m years older than the previously oldest known fossil forest. Photograph: William Stein/Christopher Berry/PA
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