Arctic Climate History

Black Fish Lake, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Using proxies such as diatom abundance in individual sediment layers from Arctic lakes can reveal important climate information from long ago.

Black Fish Lake, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Using proxies such as diatom abundance in individual sediment layers from Arctic lakes can reveal important climate information from long ago.

© US Fish and Wildlife Service

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Full Gallery

  • A false-colour image of the Arctic
  • Upper Peter Lake, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Lakebeds in the Polar Regions are important climate archives.
  • Lake in Sheenjek River Valley, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Sediment from Arctic lakes can tell researchers how climate has evolved since the beginning of the current interglacial period (Holocene) - which began about 11,000 years ago - and even earlier.
  • Examining sediment cores. Researchers examining sediment cores taken from a lakebed.
  • Lake sediment core. A section of a lake sediment core with visible annual layers of sediment.
  • Black Fish Lake, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Using proxies such as diatom abundance in individual sediment layers from Arctic lakes can reveal important climate information from long ago.
  • Diatoms viewed under a microscope. Lake sediment preserves the remains of diatoms that grow in the lake each year. The abundance of diatom remains from a given layer of sediment can tell researchers how warm the summer was during the year the sediment accumulated. A large diatom bloom during a given year means that the lake was ice-free for a longer period of time and that there were warmer temperatures during that year.
  • A view of the Greenland Ice Sheet from space. Ice cores taken from the Greenland Ice Sheet can tell us about past climate as far back as 110,000 years ago.
  • Section of ice core. Layers visible in an ice core taken during Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2)
  • Section of ice core. 19 cm long section of an ice core taken during Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) showing annual layers. Eleven annual layers are visible, with summer layers (arrowed) sandwiched in between darker winter layers.
  • Ice Archives at the NICL. A view inside the Ice Core Archives at the US National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, Colorado.
  • Tree rings. Examining rings of trees both living and long dead reveals a lot about past climate.

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