Oxygen isotope ratio cycle likely driven by the Lomagundi carbon isotope excursion. Oxygen isotope ratio cycle Oxygen isotope ratio cycles are cyclical variations in the ratio of the abundance of oxygen with an atomic mass of 18 to the abundance of oxygen with an atomic mass of 16 present in some substances, such as polar ice or calcite in ocean core samples, measured with the isotope fractionation. The ratio is linked to water temperature of ancient oceans, which in turn reflects ancient climates. Cycles in the ratio mirror climate changes in geologic history. Oxygen (chemical symbol O) has three naturally occurring isotopes: O, O,
Relative atomic mass weights, which are ubiquitous in chemical laboratories and which are revised biennially by the IUPAC's Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (CIAAW). Older (pre-1961) historical relative scales based on the atomic mass unit (symbol: "a.m.u." or "amu") used either the oxygen-16 relative isotopic mass or else the oxygen relative atomic mass (i.e., atomic weight) for reference. See the article on the history of the modern unified atomic mass unit for the resolution of these problems. The IUPAC commission CIAAW maintains an expectation-interval value for relative atomic mass (or atomic weight) on Earth named standard atomic weight. Standard atomic weight