Michalel I hope you are having fun hiking around the Finnish woods... You mentioned in your May 9th journal that you are using pollen and other proxies to study past climates. On my expedition to Lake El'gygytgyn, we were also using many different proxies such as diatoms, pollen, sedimentaiton rates, various isotopes, organic chemicals and magnetic properties of the sediments. Since we have discussed proxies in my classes, I was wondering what other proxies your team is examining? T-Mart

Michael Wing

Dear Tim:
Finland has no ancient lakes with sediments going back that far, so we don't have quite as many ways to determine temperatures a long time ago as your team has. 
Several things people look at here:
Insect parts in bog cores.  You can identify the species of insect, and some have specific temperature ranges,
Dinoflagellate cysts, ditto.
The ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 in old ice (You have to go to Norway or Iceland or Greenland to find ancient ice - there's none here.)  When the weather is colder, snow and rain have less oxygen-18. 
yours, Mike