Environment
What Famous Old Paintings Can Tell Us About Climate Change
Scientists hope to improve the study of climatology by looking at sunsets in centuries-old landscape portraits.
To study climate change, scientists often must travel to extremely remote places. Clues are stored in fossils on the ocean floor, under the bark of Alaskan trees, and inside air bubbles trapped deep in the Antarctic ice.
Christos Zerefos, an atmospheric researcher at the Academy of Athens in Greece, has a shorter commute. When he wants to investigate the climate, he stares at landscapes executed by some of Britain's most esteemed painters, like this circa-1829 piece by J. M. W. Turner: