Topic summary
Past climates
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Paleoclimatology.
Landscapes and landforms
Within climatic geomorphology, one approach is to study relict landforms to infer ancient climates. Being often concerned about past climates climatic geomorphology is considered sometimes to be a theme of historical geology. Evidence of these past climates to be studied can be found in the landforms they leave behind. Examples of these landforms are those such as glacial landforms (moraines, striations), desert features (dunes, desert pavements), and coastal landforms (marine terraces, beach ridges). Climatic geomorphology is of limited use to study recent (Quaternary, Holocene) large climate changes since there are seldom discernible in the geomorphological record.