Little Ice Age

Number of papers: 4

Not a paper, but Andy May has good insights on this topic.

Role of the Radiation Factor in Global Climatic Events of the Late Holocene, Atmospheric and Ocean Physics — Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, 2022; Fedorov et al.

This is a very readable and interesting paper. From the abstract: “On the basis of calculations of insolation and insolation characteristics, taking into account changes in solar activity, the causes of global climatic events in the late Holocene have been determined. The main reasons for the Little Ice Age (LIA) are the long and deep minimum of summer insolation and insolation seasonality (IS) in the Northern Hemisphere.”

The Approaching New Grand Solar Minimum and Little Ice Age Climate Conditions — Natural Science, 2015; Nils-Axel Morner

This paper, like a few others, explains that sunspots have a dramatic effect on climate. As we have several hundred years of good data on sunspots, and times of minimal sunspots have corresponded with lower temperatures, the author — a very well regarded climatologist — believed earth will experience a period of decreasing temperatures for the next few decades.

Little Ice Age abruptly triggered by intrusion of Atlantic waters into the Nordic Seas — Science Advances, 2021; Lapointe & Bradley

“The Little Ice Age (LIA) was one of the coldest periods of the postglacial period in the Northern Hemisphere. Although there is increasing evidence that this time interval was associated with weakening of the subpolar gyre (SPG), the sequence of events that led to its weakened state has yet to be explained. Here, we show that the LIA was preceded by an exceptional intrusion of warm Atlantic water into the Nordic Seas in the late 1300s. The intrusion was a consequence of persistent atmospheric blocking over the North Atlantic, linked to unusually high solar activity. The warmer water led to the breakup of sea ice and calving of tidewater glaciers; weakening of the blocking anomaly in the late 1300s allowed the large volume of ice that had accumulated to be exported into the North Atlantic. This led to a weakening of the SPG, setting the stage for the subsequent LIA.”

Unstable Little Ice Age climate revealed by high-resolution proxy records from northwestern China — American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, 2021; Chen et al.

“Climatic instability, especially on decadal to multi-decadal time scales, has a profound impact on societal development and human welfare in semi-arid and arid regions. ... A comparison of the proxy records of climatic instability during the LIA from northwestern China with the major modes of SST and atmospheric variability, which affect moisture/precipitation in Asia, suggests that the instability of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) from middle- to high-latitude regions during the LIA was a major driving factor. The westerlies may play an important role in linking the unstable climatic conditions observed in the above-mentioned regions. Our results support the concept that climatic instability was above the norm during cold periods, in contrast with present observations that demonstrate the occurrence of increasingly extreme climatic events with ongoing global warming.

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