Stratigraphy – The basis for any climate reconstruction

Abstract

Environmental reconstruction is one of the fundamental objectives of Geology. Climate development is particularly significant since Lithosphere, Hydrosphere (+ Cryosphere), Atmosphere and Biosphere interact modeling in time the characteristics of each one. This contribution reviews the fundamentals that have allowed climate reconstruction from scales of millions to tens of years, integrating ocean and continental records defined in sediment and ice cores as well as in other archives (speleothemes, corals tree-rings, etc). The degree of accuracy is inherent to the age of the archive and to attain precision in dating is a major challenge for this area of Science. Here we add some reflections on dating techniques and their significance. Keywords:Climate reconstructions, proxies, archives, time-scales, Paleo