-
Past Cycles: Ice Age Speculations
(Link)
To understand climate change, the obvious first step would be to explain the colossal coming and going of ice ages. Scientists devised ingenious techniques to recover evidence from the distant past, first from deposits left on land, then also from sea floor sediments, and then still better by drilling deep into ice.
-
The Modern Temperature Trend
(Link)
Tracking the world's average temperature from the late 19th century, people in the 1930s realized there had been a pronounced warming trend.
-
Rapid Climate Change
(Link)
By the 20th century, scientists had rejected old tales of world catastrophe, and were convinced that global climate could change only gradually over many tens of thousands of years. But in the 1950s, a few scientists found evidence that some changes in the past had taken only a few thousand years.
-
Timeline of Milestones
(Link)
Here are gathered in chronological sequence the most important events in the history of climate change science.
-
Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
(Link)
Since it is the Sun's energy that drives the weather system, scientists naturally wondered whether they might connect climate changes with solar variations.
-
Ocean Currents and Climate
(Link)
On our watery planet the climate is governed largely by the oceans. But for a long time, discussions of climate change did not take the oceans fully into account, simply because very little was known about them.