Using the past to forecast the future
Updated on 02 June 2009
Scientists are gathering information stored in stalagmites which could be used to predict the effects of climate change on day to day weather.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has been called "Europe’s El Nino".
And if scientists can work out how this climatic phenomenon worked in the past, they should be in a position to anticipate how global warming will actually change the weather day to day.
Lisa and James Baldini, two paleoclimatologists based in Durham, travelled to Poland (an area strongly linked to the NAO) to take samples of stalagmites tens of thousands of years old.
They are now monitoring how conditions change in the cave through the seasons.
Stalagmites act like super-accurate, information-rich tree rings. It is hoped information about the NAO weather pattern stored in these stalagmites will be of use to climatologists running computer simulations of how our weather will change in the future.
If these simulations match the stalagmite records accurately going backwards in time, they can help refine the accuracy of the simulations running forwards. This in turn could offer a window on the weather and how it will change in years, rather than decades.
Their results will not be available to climate modellers until next year. But it could mean that freak weather events - such as the floods which devastated Britain in 2006 and 2007 and the snowstorms which hit the country earlier this year – may no longer take us all by surprise.
A 30-metre ladder descent to the entry point of the lower level Bear (Niedzwiedzia) Cave.
Stalactites tens of thousands of years old in the upper level of Bear Cave.
Dr Lisa Baldini coming through the first "squeeze".
Science correspondent Tom Clarke getting his first taste of the extremes of potholing.
Dr Michal Gasiorowski taking rainwater samples from Bear Cave.
More stalagtites.
Measuring the chemical composition of water in the caves.
An incredible array of carbonate formation covering different shapes.
Retrieving "drip loggers" which record the rainfall in certain parts of the cave.
As above.
Downloading a year's worth of results from those hard-to-reach drip loggers.
