6.2 Palaeoclimatic Methods

6.2.1 Methods – Observations of Forcing and Response

The field of palaeoclimatology has seen significant methodological advances since the Third Assessment Report (TAR), and the purpose of this section is to emphasize these advances while giving an overview of the methods underlying the data used in this chapter. Many critical methodological details are presented in subsequent sections where needed. Thus, this methods section is designed to be more general, and to give readers more insight to and confidence in the findings of the chapter. Readers are referred to several useful books and special issues of journals for additional methodological detail (Bradley, 1999; Cronin, 1999; Fischer and Wefer, 1999; Ruddiman and Thomson, 2001; Alverson et al., 2003; Mackay et al., 2003; Kucera et al., 2005; NRC, 2006).