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Sedimentary Indicators of Climate Change

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Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Introduction

Innumerable publications deal with the sedimentary record of past climates (e.g., Nairn, 1961, 1963; Schwarzbach, 1963; Frakes, 1979; Parrish, 1998; and Cecil and Edgar, 2003). Earlier paleoclimatic studies concentrated on identifying paleolatitudes and their shifts in response to plate tectonic movements on timescales of millions of years. Spurred by advances in the understanding of Pleistocene and Holocene climate records, more recent studies have focused on climate changes in response to orbital parameters on the timescale of tens of thousands of years and even shorter time frame variability. The sedimentary indicators of climate change are inextricably linked to biological and chemical criteria, which are typically recorded in sediments. The sedimentary indicators of climate change consist of two broad groupings: (a) sedimentary features that directly relate to climatic parameters such as rainfall or temperature, and (b) successions of sedimentary strata that...

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Smoot, J.P. (2009). Sedimentary Indicators of Climate Change. In: Gornitz, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4411-3_210

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