Pollen

       One of the proxies that is used for paleoclimatology is pollen.  Pollen is a good proxy to utilize because it can be found in both ice core samples as well as lake sediments or mud cores.  This is due to the fact that pollen grains can be washed away by rainfall and blown around by wind sending it to various areas.  By doing so this allows there to be a record of the vegetation that was around during a certain time.
     

        Pollen counts can be used in order to see how much of a certain vegetation species was present during the specific year that the sample is taken from in a layer.  Knowing what plants are present will give paleoclimatologists knowledge about not only what species were present, but also predicted temperatures and precipitation for an area.  Certain plants will only grow under certain conditions which is what makes this kinda of proxy work.


      Pollen can be identified in a multitude of ways.  Such ways include shape, divets or cones/spikes, and color.  One such pollen grain that is easily identifiable is pine.  Pine pollen grains are also known as 'The Mickey Mouse Pollen".  This is due to its uncanny resemblance to a Mickey Mouse head.






NOAA. "Fossil and Surface Pollen Data."National Climate Data Center. N.p., 27 Sept. 2012. Web. 7 May 2013. <www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pollen.html>.

Wiki. "Paleoclimatology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 May 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology>.