Temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over the past 400,000 years

Notes from our reviewers

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• Teaching Tips
  Can be complemented with related graphics, videos and activities on Milankovitch/orbital cycles and their role in the climate system. For example, [http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/visual/animation.php?shortname=anm_polar_icecores].
• About the Science
  Graphic is slightly dated (2000) and could benefit from the inclusion of more recent ice core data going back 600K years from EPICA (Dome D). Comments from expert scientist: This webpage offers a graph of Vostok CO2 and Antarctic surface temperature, the latter reconstructed using deuterium (a hydrogen isotope) data. The graphs appear accurate and it is nice to have a simple figure showing these two datasets.
• About the Pedagogy
  Visualization will need to be "unpacked" for the data depicted to be relevant.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  Easy-to-access image can be downloaded. The site hosting this graphic provides detailed information on the source of data, use constraints and citation suggestions.