Climatology

Geological processes studied under climatology, the atlas's own discipline for long-term atmospheric patterns and climate. Includes Glaciation, the repeated buildup and retreat of continental ice sheets that reshapes climate, sea level and landscape over tens of thousands of years, driven by long-term shifts in incoming solar radiation and atmospheric composition. Belongs here: a process whose primary discipline is the long-term study of climate and ice-age cycles. Does not belong here: a shorter-timescale atmospheric process studied through direct weather observation (Meteorology), or an ocean process, even one that influences climate over time (Oceanography).