Vostok Ice Core: Excel (Mac or PC)

This activity has been selected for inclusion in the CLEAN collection.
This activity has been extensively reviewed for inclusion in the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network's collection of educational resources. For information the process and the collection, see http://cleanet.org/clean/about/selected_by_CLEAN.
This resource received a gold-star rating from a Panel Peer Review
These materials were reviewed using face-to-face NSF-style review panel of geoscience and geoscience education experts to review groups of resources addressing a single theme. Panelists wrote reviews that addressed the criteria:
- scientific accuracy and currency
- usability and
- pedagogical effectiveness
- Accept
- Accept with minor revisions
- Accept with major revisions, or
- Reject.
Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection
Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as “Exemplary” in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.
This page first made public: Sep 7, 2006
This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project
Summary
Students use Excel to graph and analyze Vostok Ice core data (more info) (160,000 years of Ice core data from Vostok Station). Data includes ice age, ice depth, carbon dioxide, methane, dust, and deuterium isotope relative abundance (dD). Students use the equation:
Temperature (deg-C)=-55.5+(dD + 440)/6 to infer temperatures from dD.
This is a complete activity that requires a working knowledge of Excel (see teaching notes and tips).
Learning Goals
- Learn about ice cores and what they can tell us about past atmospheric conditions.
- Learn about past atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4.
- Learn about the climate and ice age cycle for past 160,000 years.
- Transfer text data into Excel.
- Use Excel to make and analyze graphs and to perform simple calculations.
Context for Use
Teaching Materials
Teaching Notes and Tips
- Using Excel to Graph Ocean Topography based on Sea Floor Spreading Rates
- Using Population Dynamics to learn about Excel Basics
- Introduction to Excel from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Assessment
References and Resources
- The web site Vostok data from WDC has additional background and more years of data (420,000 years) for those interested in longer records. This might be useful for follow-up discussion in lecture.
- Worldclimate Site for mean temperature and precipitation. Type in Vostok or any other city and you get back temperature and precipitation climatology.
- NASA GISS (more info) surface temperature graphs and data.