Vostok Ice Core: Excel (Mac or PC)
This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection and has been reviewed by 2 other review processes
Hide
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 ( This site may be offline. ) (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
This activity can be as a homework assignment or lab activity in an introductory geoscience course with climate change content. Instructors may want to use the Vostok ice core data to make graphs for interactive lecture or other graphical analysis activities.
Teaching Materials
All required materials are available at The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory link Vostok Ice core data lab ( This site may be offline. )
Teaching Notes and Tips
This activity requires a working knowledge of Excel and will likely take student three to four hours to complete. It is recommended that you have students do one of the activitites below first.
- 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
The activity comes with very specific instructions on the expected lab report format. This provides students with clear expectations and can be used instructors to help assess student performance.
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.
