Geological Record: Changes in Global and Regional Climate

In this article, we’ll learn about the Geological record and the changes in global & regional climate. Let’s begin

Introduction

The long-term pattern of weather in a particular area is called climate. Temperature changes can be seen from hour to hour, day to day, month to month, or year to year. For periods of 30 years or more, different weather patterns can be seen.

Generally, climates are consistent. Hence living things can adjust to them. For example, Polar bears have adjusted to remain warm in polar climates, whereas cacti have adapted to store water that helps them to survive in dry climates. Climate change very slowly, over hundreds or even thousands of years. As temperatures change, living organisms in that area must adapt, relocate, or sometimes.

Changing Climate of Earth

Many times Earth’s climate has changed. For example, fossils dating back to 144 to 65 million years ago, i.e., the Cretaceous period, show that the Earth was much warmer than today. Fossilized plants and animals generally live in warm environments and have been seen at higher latitudes than they could survive today. For example, the breadfruit trees, now found in tropical islands, grew in the far north regions of Greenland.

In the past 500,000 years, at least four ice ages have been experienced on Earth. During these times, the temperature on the Earth decreased, which caused the expansion of ice sheets and glaciers. The ice age started about 2 million years ago. After that, the last ice age occurred around. After that, the ice caps started disappearing around 18,000 years ago. But they have not vanished entirely.

The presence of ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland shows that even now, the Earth is in a type of ice age. However, many scientists think that we are in an interglacial period, i.e., the time between ice ages when global temperatures rise and ice caps melt due to warmer temperatures, which causes the sea levels to rise. This warming is called El Niño.

Climatologists look for evidence of past climate change in several places, such as glaciers.

Glaciers scrape and scrub rocks as they go. As a result, they accumulate sediment known as glacial till. This accumulated sediment sometimes creates hills or ridges called moraines. Glaciers also produce drumlines, elongated oval hills. These geographic structures on land that currently have no glaciers indicate that once there were glaciers.

Natural Sources of Climate Change

Wind and Ocean Current

Climate changes happen due to Earth’s atmosphere. The climate change brought by El Niño, which depends on winds and ocean currents, is an example of natural atmospheric changes.

Forces outside Earth’s atmosphere are also one of the causes of natural climate change. For example, the 100,000-year cycles of ice ages are most likely associated with changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis and the shape of Earth’s orbit around the sun. Slowly these planetary factors change over time and cause changes in the movement of the sun’s energy to different parts of the world in different seasons.

Meteorite

The influence of large meteorites on Earth can also affect climate change. The effect of a meteor can send lots of waste into the atmosphere. This waste can block some of the sun’s rays, making it cold and dark. This climate change affects the survival of organisms.

Many paleontologists think that the effect of a meteor or comet resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. This is because dinosaurs cannot survive in a cool, dark climate. Their bodies cannot adapt to the cold and the dark, which limits the growth of plants on which they survive.

Plate Tectonics

Climate change can also be caused by plate tectonics. Over a period of time, there has been an excellent change in Earth’s continental plates. More than 200 million years ago, the merging of continents resulted in one big landmass called Pangaea. When the continents broke and moved away from each other, their locations on Earth changed, and eventually, the movements of ocean currents also changed. So, both of these changes had effects on climate.

Greenhouse Gases

Changes in the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere also affect climate change. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap the sun’s heat within Earth’s atmosphere. This causes a rise in temperatures on the Earth’s surface. In addition, volcanoes on land and under the ocean—release greenhouse gases. Hence if the volcanic eruption reaches the troposphere, the additional gases also increase warming.