|
Actually that kind of stuff is dying out in importance. It will still have it's place for certain measurements but it's relative youth is going against it. The new hotness are studying speleothems (stalactites, stalagmites and flowstones). They are limestone deposits, the oldest of which date back to the Middle Triassic (~230 million years ago) They are formed when calcium carbonate precipitates from degassing solutions seeping into limestone caves
That is much older than any ice cores we can get now. And it remains much more stable.
Speleothems grow in rings just like trees on a fairly steady basis, though not as steady as trees do.
They are important for climate change because periods of rapid deposits denote wetness intervals. Oxygen ratios in the composition reflect regional precipitation. Their annual laminations are also climate related.
There are a bunch of other things you can do with speliothems that even I don't fully understand and I have been on and off doing study with them for the past several years. The science for them isn't perfected but it's progressing quickly.
|