Climatology

Climatologists use past data and advanced models to forecast future climate trends

Unlike meteorology, which focuses on weather forecasting over several days, climatology identifies trends in data over periods of 30 or more years. This data can go back millions of years and help refine models to forecast centuries into the future.

View the 55 ECVs used to describe Earth's atmospheric conditions

Essential climate variables include physical, chemical, and biological variables that meaningfully contribute to Earth's climate and how it changes with time. Many of these variables influence one another through feedback mechanisms across Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere.

Climate determinism wrongly linked human traits and societal progress to geography

Historically rooted in Greek philosophy, its ideas used the latitudes where people were located to justify racial hierarchies, casting tropical peoples as lazy or inferior. These biases still influence how media and research portray people in climatically disadvantaged regions. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Climate data is monitored globally using tools from satellites to backyard gauges

Scientists use satellites, balloons, ocean buoys, and land-based instruments to track climate variables like temperature, precipitation, and wind. These tools gather data from deep ocean waters to the upper atmosphere.

Scientists use climate proxies—physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved in sediments, ice, and fossils—to infer historical climate data and determine past climate patterns.

Tree rings can reveal centuries of environmental change and natural events

The width and shape of tree rings reflect yearly growth conditions like rainfall or snowfall. Scars in the rings can record disruptions such as fires, avalanches, or earthquakes, explaining when and how those events occurred.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Scientists can determine Earth's past environmental conditions by analyzing sediment cores—accumulated layers of mud and remains of charcoal, pollen, plants, algae, and other organic material.

Speleothems are diverse mineral formations that form in air-filled caves

Speleothems like stalactites and stalagmites form when water deposits minerals after a cave rises above the water table and fills with air. These formations preserve the mineral deposits, which may serve as climate proxies, for as long as a million years.

The ratio of stable carbon isotopes in climate proxies provides climate variable data

Measures of the abundance of carbon-13 and carbon-12 can vary in a sample due to environmental and climatic factors. Plants more readily assimilate carbon-12 during photosynthesis, allowing the ratio to serve as a proxy for past conditions that favored plant life.