We often hear in the news that CO2 levels have risen or fallen compared to a couple, or even hundreds or thousands of years ago. How do they know what the CO2 levels were thousands of years ago? And how are they so sure in the accuracy of their tests?
In: Chemistry
Rocks and ice mostly. As sediment turns into rock and snowfall gets packed into ice, some of the air that’s around gets trapped. As more rock and ice gets formed on top it stays trapped in there. Scientists then dig up large core samples where they drill out long cylinders of material, and they can see all of the layers that form year after year. Then they can check how much CO2 was trapped in each layer over time.
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