The Medieval Warm Period

The Medieval Warm Period PDF Author: Malcolm K. Hughes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401111863
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are widely considered to have been the major features of the Earth's climate over the past 1000 years. In this volume the issue of whether there really was a Medieval Warm Period, and if so, where and when, is addressed. The types of evidence examined include historical documents, tree rings, ice cores, glacial-geological records, borehole temperature, paleoecological data and records of solar receipts inferred from cosmogenic isotopes. Growth in the availability of several of these types of data in recent years, and technical advances in their derivation and use, warrant this state-of-the-art re-examination of Medieval Warm Period. The book will be of value to all those with an interest in the natural variability of the climate system, for example those concerned with anticipating and detecting anthropogenic climate change.

The Medieval Warm Period

The Medieval Warm Period PDF Author: Malcolm K. Hughes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401111863
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are widely considered to have been the major features of the Earth's climate over the past 1000 years. In this volume the issue of whether there really was a Medieval Warm Period, and if so, where and when, is addressed. The types of evidence examined include historical documents, tree rings, ice cores, glacial-geological records, borehole temperature, paleoecological data and records of solar receipts inferred from cosmogenic isotopes. Growth in the availability of several of these types of data in recent years, and technical advances in their derivation and use, warrant this state-of-the-art re-examination of Medieval Warm Period. The book will be of value to all those with an interest in the natural variability of the climate system, for example those concerned with anticipating and detecting anthropogenic climate change.

The Great Warming

The Great Warming PDF Author: Brian Fagan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596917806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
In this New York Times bestseller, Brian Fagan shows how climate transformed-and sometimes destroyed--human societies during the earth's last global warming phase. From the 10th to 15th centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide-a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including much of Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful crops and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In others, drought shook long-established societies, such as the Maya and the Indians of the American Southwest, whose monumental buildings were left deserted as elaborate social structures collapsed. Brian Fagan examines how subtle changes in the environment had far-reaching effects on human life, in a narrative that sweeps from the Arctic ice cap to the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The lessons of history suggest we may be yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today.

Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years

Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309102251
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
In response to a request from Congress, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years assesses the state of scientific efforts to reconstruct surface temperature records for Earth during approximately the last 2,000 years and the implications of these efforts for our understanding of global climate change. Because widespread, reliable temperature records are available only for the last 150 years, scientists estimate temperatures in the more distant past by analyzing "proxy evidence," which includes tree rings, corals, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, ice cores, boreholes, and glaciers. Starting in the late 1990s, scientists began using sophisticated methods to combine proxy evidence from many different locations in an effort to estimate surface temperature changes during the last few hundred to few thousand years. This book is an important resource in helping to understand the intricacies of global climate change.

The Medieval Warm Period

The Medieval Warm Period PDF Author: Malcolm K. Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789401111874
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description


Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900–1600

Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900–1600 PDF Author: William C. Foster
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292742703
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Climate change is today’s news, but it isn’t a new phenomenon. Centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling are well documented for Europe and the North Atlantic. These variations in climate, including the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), AD 900 to 1300, and the early centuries of the Little Ice Age (LIA), AD 1300 to 1600, had a substantial impact on the cultural history of Europe. In this pathfinding volume, William C. Foster marshals extensive evidence that the heating and cooling of the MWP and LIA also occurred in North America and significantly affected the cultural history of Native peoples of the American Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast. Correlating climate change data with studies of archaeological sites across the Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast, Foster presents the first comprehensive overview of how Native American societies responded to climate variations over seven centuries. He describes how, as in Europe, the MWP ushered in a cultural renaissance, during which population levels surged and Native peoples substantially intensified agriculture, constructed monumental architecture, and produced sophisticated works of art. Foster follows the rise of three dominant cultural centers—Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, Cahokia on the middle Mississippi River, and Casas Grandes in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico—that reached population levels comparable to those of London and Paris. Then he shows how the LIA reversed the gains of the MWP as population levels and agricultural production sharply declined; Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, and Casas Grandes collapsed; and dozens of smaller villages also collapsed or became fortresses.

The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age PDF Author: Jean M. Grove
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134857462
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 869

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Book Description
The evidence for the Little Ice Age, the most important fluctuation in global climate in historical times, is most dramatically represented by the advance of mountain glaciers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their retreat since about 1850. The effects on the landscape and the daily life of people have been particularly apparent in Norway and the Alps. This major book places an extensive body of material relating to Europe, in the form of documentary evidence of the history of the glaciers, their portrayal in paintings and maps, and measurements made by scientists and others, within a global perspective. It shows that the glacial history of mountain regions all over the world displays a similar pattern of climatic events. Furthermore, fluctuations on a comparable scale have occurred at intervals of a millennium or two throughout the last ten thousand years since the ice caps of North America and northwest Europe melted away. This is the first scholarly work devoted to the Little Ice Age, by an author whose research experience of the subject has been extensive. This book includes large numbers of maps, diagrams and photographs, many not published elsewhere, and very full bibliographies. It is a definitive work on the subject, and an excellent focus for the work of economic and social historians as well as glaciologists, climatologists, geographers, and specialists in mountain environment.

The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age PDF Author: Brian Fagan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541618572
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Only in the last decade have climatologists developed an accurate picture of yearly climate conditions in historical times. This development confirmed a long-standing suspicion: that the world endured a 500-year cold snap -- The Little Ice Age -- that lasted roughly from A.D. 1300 until 1850. The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today's global warming. With its basis in cutting-edge science, The Little Ice Age offers a new perspective on familiar events. Renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold affected Norse exploration; how changing sea temperatures caused English and Basque fishermen to follow vast shoals of cod all the way to the New World; how a generations-long subsistence crisis in France contributed to social disintegration and ultimately revolution; and how English efforts to improve farm productivity in the face of a deteriorating climate helped pave the way for the Industrial Revolution and hence for global warming. This is a fascinating, original book for anyone interested in history, climate, or the new subject of how they interact.

Unstoppable Global Warming

Unstoppable Global Warming PDF Author: Siegfried Fred Singer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9780742551176
Category : Global temperature changes
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Argues that global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon that has not been caused by human activities and that its negative consequences have been greatly overestimated.

The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean

The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean PDF Author: Ronnie Ellenblum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139560980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
As a 'Medieval Warm Period' prevailed in Western Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the eastern Mediterranean region, from the Nile to the Oxus, was suffering from a series of climatic disasters which led to the decline of some of the most important civilizations and cultural centres of the time. This provocative study argues that many well-documented but apparently disparate events - such as recurrent drought and famine in Egypt, mass migrations in the steppes of central Asia, and the decline in population in urban centres such as Baghdad and Constantinople - are connected and should be understood within the broad context of climate change. Drawing on a wealth of textual and archaeological evidence, Ronnie Ellenblum explores the impact of climatic and ecological change across the eastern Mediterranean in this period, to offer a new perspective on why this was a turning point in the history of the Islamic world.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars PDF Author: Michael E. Mann
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023115254X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change examines the fossil-fuel industry's public relations campaign to discredit the science of climate change and deny the reality of global warming.