Climate Science

The discipline of reconstructing and interpreting climate on a geological rather than a historical timescale. Includes paleoclimatology, which reads past climate from physical evidence preserved in ice cores, sediment layers, fossils and rock rather than from direct atmospheric observation. Belongs here: any discipline whose defining method is the reconstruction of ancient climate from physical proxy evidence. Does not belong here: climatology, which studies climate within the observational and instrumental record (Atmospheric Science). This class holds one live entity today; further paleoclimate subdisciplines have a real home waiting here as later mint waves add them.