Ice Cores Decipher Mysteries of Past Climate

Understanding the Earth system and, in particular, its climate, remains one of the major intellectual challenges faced by science. The processes influencingclimate, the mechanisms through which they act, and the responses they generate are, in general, as complex and poorly understood as they are important. Because observational records of climate processes span only the most recent years of Earth's history and, in many instances, are known to be markedly affected by anthropogenic influences, paleorecords of past climates are exceedingly important to the development of scientific understanding of local, regional and global climate systems. Of the various paleorecords available to science, ice cores provide the most direct and highest resolution view of the paleoatmosphere.