climate changes

Dinosaurs experienced climate changes before K-T collision

Climate change had little to do with the demise of the dinosaurs, but the last million years before their extinction had a complex pattern of warming and cooling events that are important to our understanding of the end of their reign, according to geologists. “The terrestrial paleoclimate record near the K-T is historically contradictory and poorly resolved,” says Dr. Peter Wilf, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State. “In contrast, the resolution of K-T marine climates that has emerged over the last 10 years is excellent. Our work brings the terrestrial record up to speed so that we can look for global climate events that occurred for both land and sea.”

Large-scale climate changes occur naturally, new research says

A Canadian researcher has found new evidence that — contrary to previous belief — the past 6,000 years have been marked by large-scale climate changes occurring naturally, on a regular basis. He and his research team have documented four abrupt climate shifts over the past 5,500 years in western Canada, occurring on average every 1,220 years. Until now the last 6,000 years has been considered climatically stable, with the main evidence of large-scale shifts being found in the Greenland ice cores and sediments from the Atlantic Ocean. The team’s findings are reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.