1 / 11

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Climate Anomaly. The Vikings Explore…. Colonised Iceland between 870-930AD Farms prosperous in medieval times were engulfed by glaciers by 1700 Erik the Red, Thorvaldsson reached Greenland about 985AD

ho
Download Presentation

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age

  2. The Medieval Climate Anomaly

  3. The Vikings Explore… • Colonised Iceland between 870-930AD • Farms prosperous in medieval times were engulfed by glaciers by 1700 • Erik the Red, Thorvaldsson reached Greenland about 985AD • The settlers experienced above average temperatures for the first crucial years • Eastern Settlement on the south coast, abandoned by 1500 • Western settlement near current Nuuk, abandoned around 1350. Sea-ice and snow probably played a role.

  4. The Vikings Explore… • Leif Eriksson, Erik the Red’s son, arrived in North America in 1000AD. • He establishdVínland(wineland), Helluland (slab land), Skaeling land (wretch land) and Markland (forest land). • Travel between Greenland and North America would only have been possible for 2 months of the year. • In years of heavy sea-ice, travel would have been perilous. • Conflicts with indigenous people probably led to the abandonment of the American settlements after a few years.

  5. The Little Ice Age – When was it? • Three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming • May have been independent events at different places at different times • Peak cooling in Europe was in the 17th Century • Peak cooling in N. America was in 19th Century

  6. The Little Ice Age – Where was it?

  7. The Little Ice Age - Volcanoes Volcanic forcing of climate over the past 1500 years: An improved ice core-based index for climate models 2008, ChaochaoGao, Alan Robock, and Caspar Ammann

  8. The Little Ice Age – The Sun

  9. The Little Ice Age – Conclusions Changes in the Sun and volcanic activity, coupled with changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation (the pressure difference between Iceland and the Azores), the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, the north Atlantic storm track and feedbacks involving the quantity of polar ice and the natural release of greenhouse gases combined to give the Little Ice Age, at least in Europe and at best in the northern Hemisphere.

More Related