NASA Travels to Ancient Egypt for Climate Change Info

I found this interesting article which tells the story of how NASA is using ancient records on the Nile river to help answer the mysteries of climate change.

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records

Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past.

Scientists have traditionally relied upon indirect data gathering methods to study climate in the Earth's past, such as drilling ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. Such samples of accumulated snow and ice drilled from deep within ice sheets or glaciers contain trapped air bubbles whose composition can provide a picture of past climate conditions. Now, however, a group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river.

[edit on 2007/3/21 by JacKatMtn]

I found a pdf from nasa reporting on the subject:

Does the Nile reflect solar variability?

Abstract. Historical records of the Nile water level provide a unique opportunity to investigate
the possibility that solar variability influences the Earth’s climate. Particularly important are
the annual records of the water level, which are uninterrupted for the years 622-1470 A.D. These
records are non-stationary, so that standard spectral analyses cannot adequately characterize
them. Here the Empirical Mode Decomposition technique, which is designed to deal with nonstationary,
nonlinear time series, becomes useful. It allows the identification of two characteristic
time scales in the water level data that can be linked to solar variability: the 88 year period and
a time scale of about 200 years. These time scales are also present in the concurrent aurora data.
Auroras are driven by coronal mass ejections and the rate of auroras is an excellent proxy for
solar variabiliy. Analysis of auroral data contemporaneous with the Nile data shows peaks at 88
years and about 200 years. This suggests a physical link between solar variability and the lowfrequency
variations of the Nile water level. The link involves the influence of solar variability
on the North Annual Mode of atmospheric variability and its North Atlantic and Indian Oceans
patterns that affect rainfall over Eastren Equatorial Africa where the Nile originates.

duplicate post

[edit on 2007/3/21 by JacKatMtn]