Latest Little Ice Age Stories

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Modern climatologists have access to a wide array of technological tools, but an international team looking to study climate events from the past thousand years has decided to utilize something a little more old school. Researchers led by Alan Wanamaker from Iowa State University have been collecting clam shells from the waters of the North Atlantic because the mollusks act as tiny recorders, storing information about their environment...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After Columbus sailed to the New World, the burning of forests and fields subsided, a phenomenon that has been attributed to loss of native population by the onset of European diseases carried over by explorers and settlers. But new research led by the University of Utah suggests that global cooling and not population decline resulted in fewer fires because both preceded Columbus in many regions around the world. The team of...

The calculations prepared by Mainz scientists will also influence the way current climate change is perceived An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from...

Pitt scientists also discover unexpected complexity to the US West's patterns of drought during the Middle Ages Through an exploration of tree rings and oxygen isotopes, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are now able to better pinpoint the history of droughts in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West. A paper published in the online July 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a particularly warm period...

Tree ring and oxygen isotope data from the U.S. Pacific Northwest do not provide the same information on past precipitation, but rather than causing a problem, the differing results are a good thing, according to a team of geologists. The researchers are trying to understand the larger spatial patterns and timing of drought in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West. "We generally understand that the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a warm period in much of the northern hemisphere...

A large part of the Northern Hemisphere was in the midst of an unusual cold snap for nearly 500 years, from the Middle Ages through the early 19th century, in what scientists now call the “Little Ice Age.” A new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, has probed the longstanding mystery of when this event actually began, what caused it and how it was sustained for such a long period. Gifford Miller, a climatologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and...

Joshua Kelly for RedOrbit.com Researchers with the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers are investigating a link between the massive solar minimum that occurred around 2800 years ago and the effects that it had on the climate of Europe.  They are still researching how the solar minimum could possibly impact the region of Europe in general. One thing they have been researching is information from Lake Maar to see how the sediment in the lake correlates to the solar minimum....

University of Colorado researchers report that they have answered some questions surrounding Earth's Little Ice Age, which started between A.D. 1275 and 1300, and lasted into the late 19th century. According to the new study, the Little Ice Age was triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self-perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean. Professor Gifford Miller, who led the study, said the team's evidence from radiocarbon dates from dead...

Researchers are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps. With luck, that analysis will yield a record of past climate and environmental changes in the region for several centuries, and perhaps even covering the last 1,000 years.  Scientists also hope that the core contains the remnants of early human activity in the region, such as the atmospheric byproducts of smelting metals. The...

Study on Jakobshavn Isbrae supports growing evidence that calving glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate changeLarge, marine-calving glaciers have the ability not only to shrink rapidly in response to global warming, but to grow at a remarkable pace during periods of global cooling, according to University at Buffalo geologists working in Greenland.The conclusion stems from new research on Jakobshavn Isbrae, a tongue of ice extending out to sea from Greenland's west coast. Through an...