Heat, Ice Cores, Manganese Nodules

Using instruments to measure temperature – whether of objects or living beings, of the earth or the atmosphere – has only been possible for a relatively short time. Although experiments with appliances and scales date back to the days of classical antiquity, precise measurements only became possible around 1654 in Florence when the first thermometer was built, commissioned by the Medici. This was an astonishing fragile instrument, a glass tube in which an amount of alcohol, sealed off from the air, expanded or shrank, depending on the temperature. 1 This instrument allowed measurement to be made and compared, not just in Florence but at the same time in Pisa, Bologna, Paris, Innsbruck and Osnabrück. Ideally always employing the same method, regularly, at the same time using at least two thermometers, one of them facing north,

the other south. In addition, notes were made as well as ‘drawings of hailstones or of flowers that were just starting to blossom’. The concern was to link and record scientific observations with the help of a measurement network, in order to arrive at an objective, ordered understanding of the world. Not everyone wished for this ordered understanding. Above all it was not ‘willed by God’. Temperature, heat and cold appeared to be ‘the concern of God’. To deter the Medici from further such undertakings the Church gave them a bishopric and in return they stopped taking the measurements in 1670, after just 16 years 2 , until around 1760, a Europe-wide measurement network was established, followed around 1870 by a worldwide network which for the past 150 years has supplied data measured by instruments, with increasingly greater precision and detail. 3

Wolfgang Tschapeller Damjan Minovski

„…ice cores are stored in 1m portions, heat sealed in transparent synthetic material, additionally protected by stainless steel tubes at temperatures below 20°C. Note the black discoloration of the ice core next to the researcher´s left hand. The black speckle indicates volcanic activity…”

Still from video: “About ice cores” Source: https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores, 2020-01-25

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Is that sufficient? Not really! We have temperature data recorded worldwide by instruments over the last 150 years. For remaining 4.54 billion years – that is minus these 150 years – there are no such temperature measurements. There are, however, natural climate archives such as tree rings, stalagmites, ice cores, corals, sea or ocean sediments, and pollen, which have an innate chronicle of the world that can be decoded by means of transfer functions 4 and that provide information on many themes, including temperature and including HITZE. But of course, only for as long as these natural climate archives still exist, as long as they are not destroyed as the result of melting or are removed from the data context of deep-sea sediments as collateral damage caused by the process of extracting manganese nodules. We see that not only might the future slip out of our hands; the past can also slide away. But there could also be a brief and fortunate contact in which information can be rubbed off and transferred from one medium to the other, from natural climate archives that carry the entire text of the past to digital media that are absorbent enough to take up the entire text and to transfer it to another way of being.

Is this, then, enough? Possibly! We have a small amount of directly measured data. And then we have an enormous mass of data from natural climate archives. Together they produce comprehensive models which, due to the sheer overweight of the past, shove the present and the future ahead of them as just the foremost edge - like a terminal moraine, as it were. As if there were no future! But then there is one. The graphs produced 5 show for the next 100 years at least ‘a little future’. For 2050 they show a steep swing upward – and upwards here means HITZE – which was reached briefly about 115 000 years ago in the Eemian Period or, for a longer period, around 3-5 million years ago in the Pliocene. For 2100 then a steeper swing upwards, which means even more HITZE. To find an equivalent in the history of the earth we have to look back even further, around 15-35 million years ago in the Miocene and Oligocene 6 . For these geological eras, whether it be the Eemian Period, Pliocene, Miocene or Oligocene, there are good and, in some cases, surprising detailed descriptions. Do these provide sufficient coffee grounds to read the future from?

Wolfgang Tschapeller

1 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermometer, 2019-12-15 2 www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-temperaturaufzeichnungflorenz-100.html, 2019-12-15 3 www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/klima/informationsportal-klimawandel/ klimaforschung/klimamessung/geschichte, 2019-12-15 4 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimaarchiv, 2019-12-15 5 …” the graphs produced … “ refers to IPCC AR5 RCP8,5. AR5 stands for Assessment Report of the IPPC. RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathway and RCP8,5 (one of the four RCPs that were taken from the IPCC) stands for the pessimistic assumption that the CO2 emissions will increase throughout the entire 21st century, see https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway. The AR5 of the IPPC also describes scenarios that extend to the 23rd century. 6 W. Bölsche et al. Leben in der Warmzeit der Erde, Aus den Urtagen vor dem heutigen Klimawandel, 2019. 1 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermometer, 2019-12-15 2 www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-temperaturaufzeichnungflorenz-100.html, 2019-12-15 3 www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/klima/informationsportal-klimawandel/ klimaforschung/klimamessung/geschichte, 2019-12-15 4 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimaarchiv, 2019-12-15 5 …” the graphs produced … “ refers to IPCC AR5 RCP8,5. AR5 stands for Assessment Report of the IPPC. RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathway and RCP8,5 (one of the four RCPs that were taken from the IPCC) stands for the pessimistic assumption that the CO2 emissions will increase throughout the entire 21st century, see https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathway. The AR5 of the IPPC also describes scenarios that extend to the 23rd century. 6 W. Bölsche et al. Leben in der Warmzeit der Erde, Aus den Urtagen vor dem heutigen Klimawandel, 2019.