Information theory as a forensics tool for investigating climate mysteries

During Earth's last glacial period, temperatures on the planet periodically spiked dramatically and rapidly. Data in layers of ice of Greenland and Antarctica show that these warming events—called Dansgaard-Oeschger and Antarctic Isotope Maximum events—occurred at least 25 times. Each time, in a matter of decades, temperatures climbed 5-10 degrees Celsius, then cooled again, gradually. While there remain several competing theories for the still-unexplained mechanisms behind these spikes, a new paper in the journal Chaos suggests that mathematics from information theory could offer a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding them.