Week 2 Reflections

1. What are the most important themes you have learned this week?
This week has been an interesting introduction to paleoclimatology. The long-distant changes in the Earth’s climate over its history and how we are able to read these changes in the evidence of rocks, trees and sediments.

2. What did you find most interesting? And why?
I found the idea of the ‘snowball Earth’ fascinating; the feedback mechanisms that can allow such an event to occur, and the processes that reverse it. I found the aspect of there being a ‘tipping point’ of ice cover very interesting, and how that separates this phenomena from an ice age.
I also liked learning about the different methods of being able to ‘read’ the climate history of the Earth.

3. Was there something that you learned this week that prompted you to do your own research?
As discussed in Q2 I found the ‘Snowball Earth’ interesting. The links provided were very useful and yielded an ongoing path to more about the subject.