Advances in Earth Science ›› 2013, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (4): 429-446. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2013.04.0429
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Liu Jia 1,Zhang Tingjun 2,3
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Liu Jia,Zhang Tingjun. Reconstruction of Past Climate Change by Borehole Temperature Gradients: A Review[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2013, 28(4): 429-446.
The signal of Earth’s surface temperature change can penetrate into the ground and influence the ground temperature profiles,superimposed to the long-term steady-state geothermal profile. In turn,the ground temperature perturbation due to the surface temperature change can be used to reconstruct past surface temperature variation. Although the influence of surface temperature changes to underground temperature and heat flow have been recognized for a long time,using the borehole temperature profiles to reconstruct past temperatre changes mainly started in the 1980s. Borehole climate method is different with other approximate methods of reconstructing the past climate since it is based directly on the physical contact of temperature profile,the past Ground Surface Temperature (GST),and reconstruction parameters. It has been confirmed that using borehole temperature to reconstruct the past surface temperature trend is quite successful,and surface temperature can be eventually combined with the estimated average preobservation (POMs). Borehole temperature logs are not the proxies of surface temperature,but the direct measurement of Earth’s surface energy balance. We synthesize the state-of-the-art knowledge of utilizing borehole temperature profile to infer past GST history and some existing issues associated with this method.