Education and Outreach

Divers extracting coral cores with a hydraulic drill on a Porites lobata colony, Clipperton Atoll. Learn more about what corals can tell us about past climate.

These resources explain how scientists study past climate, demonstrate the value of paleoclimatology in climate change science, and provide images and illustrations of paleoclimatology research.

Paleoclimatology Resources

• Paleoclimate Discussion List
  Join the forum for discussions and announcements, including employment opportunities, among paleoclimatologists throughout the world at the Paleoclimate Discussion List.
• Introduction to Paleoclimatology
  Paleoclimatology is the study of climate prior to the widespread availability of records of temperature, precipitation, and other instrumental data.
• Introduction to Proxies
  Paleoclimatologists gather proxy data from natural recorders of climate variability such as tree rings, ice cores, fossil pollen, ocean sediments, corals, and historical data.
• Paleo Perspectives
  NCDC’s Paleoclimatology Program created a series of Paleo Perspectives to show how paleoclimatology data provide a long baseline of past changes.
• Coral Paleoclimatology
  NCDC's Paleoclimatology Program provides information to scientific and general audiences about using corals to understand past climate.
• View Paleoclimatology Images
  Images and documentation provide historical information on a variety of paleoclimatology subjects, including ice ages, tree rings, ice cores, coral reefs, and much more.
• Climate TimeLine Information Tool
  The Climate TimeLine allows users to examine climate change and variability at different time scales from seconds to millions of years.