Weather Forecast Back for 8 Million Years

M. I. Kuz'min

The global climate is highly unstable, and people witness climatic changes even within their life span. The Earth's surface became about 0.5А б warmer for the past century. The temperature growth, quite notable on the global scale, decreased the snow area and caused an average sea level rise of 10-20 cm. Waning of Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets as a result of global warming may bring about another Deluge, which will flood large areas in Europe and Southeast Asia.

The causes of global climate disasters are, naturally, of interest to scientists and broad public. The clue to the present and the future of our planet is in its past. A coded record of the climate in the past is stored in sedimentary layers, which bear features of changes in the sea level, warm and cold oceanic currents, air circulation, and waxing/waning cycles of ice sheets. People only have to get and to decode the record. The first thing is to drill a hole in sediments and to recover a core. Say, a hole in the bottom of the world deepest lake€

More information on these and other subjects you can find in the printed version of our journal.