1. EPICA Ice Cores (800,000 year historical climate data)
Primary Data Archives:
NOAA NCEI - Main repository for EPICA data:
- https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=noaa-icecore-12882
- https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/ice-core/
CDIAC/ESS-DIVE - 800,000-year ice-core CO2 records:
- https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html
PANGAEA - Temperature proxy data:
- https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.683655
2. Berkeley Earth (Modern warming data)
Primary Data Portal:
Berkeley Earth Official Data Portal:
- https://berkeleyearth.org/data/
NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory:
- https://psl.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/month/DS/BERKELEYGLBCOMT/
- https://psl.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/month/DS/BERKELEYGLBLT/
Community Resources:
- https://github.com/compgeolab/temperature-data
Data Sources:
1. EPICA ice cores - Used for the 800,000 year historical climate data
2. Berkeley Earth - Used for the modern warming data (the "sharp red spike")
Description
Reading This Visualization
The Flow: Time moves left to right, from 800,000 years ago to today. Temperature flows up and down like a mountain range.
The Colors:
- Deep Blue Valleys: Ice ages (6-8°C colder than pre-industrial)
- Turquoise Slopes: Transition periods (warming/cooling naturally)
- Green Plateau: Stable Holocene epoch—the last 12,000 years of climate stability that enabled human civilization
- Red Spike: Modern era—the last 150 years of unprecedented rapid warming
What the Pattern Shows: The regular rhythm of blue valleys and green plateaus shows natural climate cycles for 800,000 years. These cycles took 5,000-10,000 years to transition between states.
The red spike at the far right breaks this pattern—rising 1.4°C in just 150 years, faster than any natural change in the entire record.
Why This Matters:
- Speed is unprecedented: 100x faster than natural warming
- Direction is wrong: Natural cycles suggest we should be slowly cooling, not warming
- Magnitude is growing: Already beyond Holocene stability range and accelerating
The visual metaphor is clear: we're climbing a mountain faster than Earth's climate has ever moved.