Medieval Warm Period in Upper North America
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M EDIEVAL WARM PERIOD IN UPPER NORTH AMERICA CO2SCIENCE & SPPI ORIGINAL PAPER ♦ April 16, 2014 MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD IN UPPER NORTH AMERICA Citation: Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. "Medieval Warm Period in Upper North America.” Last modified April 16, 2014. http://www.co2science.org/subject/n/summaries/northamericamwp.php. Climate alarmists claim that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations due to the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, have raised global air temperatures to their highest level in the past one to two millennia. And, therefore, investigating the possibility of a period of equal global warmth within the past one to two thousand years has become a high-priority enterprise; for if such a period could be shown to have existed, when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was far less than it is today, there would be no compelling reason to attribute the warmth of our day Climate alarmists claim to the CO2 released to the air by mankind since the that rising atmospheric beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Thus, in this review of the pertinent scientific literature, results of CO2 concentrations the search for such knowledge are presented for have raised global air studies conducted within the borders of Canada and other regions north of the lower 48 states of the temperatures to their United States of America. highest level in the past Arseneault and Payette (1997)1 analyzed tree-ring and one to two millennia. growth-form sequences obtained from more than 300 spruce remains buried in a presently treeless peatland located near the tree line in northern Québec in order to produce a proxy record of climate for this region Therefore, investigating between AD 690 and 1591. This effort revealed that the possibility of a over the course of this 900-year time period, the trees period of equal global of the region experienced several episodes of both suppressed and rapid growth, indicative of both warmth within the colder and warmer conditions, respectively, than past one to two those of the present. Cooler (suppressed growth) conditions prevailed between AD 760-860 and 1025- thousand years has 1400, while warmer (rapid growth) conditions were become a high-priority prevalent between AD 700-750, 860-1000, 1400-1450 and 1500-1570. enterprise. Further analysis of the warm period between AD 860 and 1000 led the two researchers to conclude that the warmth experienced in northern Quebec during this time period coincided with the Medieval Warm Period that was experienced across the North Atlantic and Northern Europe, which "exceeded in duration and magnitude both the 16th and 20th century warm periods identified previously [by other scientists] using the same methods." Furthermore, on the basis of current 1 http://www.co2science.org/articles/V4/N25/C3.php. 2 annual temperatures at their study site and the northernmost 20th century location of the forest, which at that time was 130 km south of their site, they concluded that the "Medieval Warm Period was approximately 1°C warmer than the 20th century." Three years later, Campbell and Campbell (2000)2 analyzed pollen and charcoal records obtained from sediment cores retrieved from three small ponds - South Pond (AD 1655-1993), Birch Island Pond (AD 1499-1993) and Pen 5 Pond (400 BC-AD 1993) - located within Canada's Elk Island National Park, which covers close to 200 km2 of the Beaver Hills region of east-central Alberta. And in so doing, and counter to the intuitive assumption that there would be an "increase in fire activity with warmer and drier climate," the Canadian researchers found that "declining groundwater levels during the Medieval Warm Period [MWP] allowed the replacement of substantial areas of shrub birch with the less fire-prone aspen, causing a decline in fire frequency and/or severity, while increasing carbon storage on the landscape." And they thus concluded that this scenario "is likely playing out again today," as all three of the sites they studied "show historic increases in Populus pollen and declines in charcoal." In further discussing their results, the two researchers noted that the earth's present climate "is warmer and drier than that of either the Little Ice Age (which followed the MWP) or the early Neoglacial (preceding the MWP)," and they say we must therefore "consider the present pond levels to be more representative of the MWP than of the time before or after." But since their Pen 5 Pond data indicate that sediment charcoal concentrations have not yet dropped to the level characteristic of the MWP - even with what they describe as the help of "active fire suppression in the park combined with what may be thought of as unintentional fire suppression due to agricultural activity around the park" - it would appear that their study sites and their surroundings have not yet risen to the level of warmth and dryness that they experienced during the MWP, which they describe as having occurred over the period AD 800- 1200. Focusing on Alaska, Calkin et al. (2001)3 reviewed what they called "the most current and comprehensive research of Holocene glaciation" along the northernmost Gulf of Alaska between the Kenai Peninsula and Yakutat Bay; and in doing so, they noted several periods of glacial advance and retreat during the past 7000 years. Most recently, they described a general retreat during the Medieval Warm Period that lasted for "at least a few centuries prior to AD 1200." Then, following this Medieval Climatic Optimum, there were three major intervals of Little Ice Age glacial advance: the early 15th century, the middle 17th century, and the last half of the 19th century. And during these latter time periods, glacier equilibrium line altitudes were depressed from 150 to 200 m below present values as Alaskan glaciers "reached their Holocene maximum extensions." Clearly, the existence of a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in Alaska is an obvious reality. But what is especially interesting to note is that glaciers there reached their maximum Holocene extensions during the Little Ice Age. Hence, it can logically be inferred that Alaskan temperatures reached their Holocene minimum during this time as well, leading a person to 2 http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N48/C2.php. 3 http://www.co2science.org/articles/V4/N36/C2.php. 3 ask: should it come as any surprise if temperatures in Alaska rise significantly above the chill of the Little Ice Age in the region's natural recovery from Should it come as any the coldest period of the entire Holocene? surprise if temperatures Also working in Alaska, and concurrently, were Hu et in Alaska rise al. (2001)4, who "conducted multi-proxy geochemical analyses of a sediment core from significantly above the Farewell Lake in the northwestern foothills of the chill of the Little Ice Age Alaska Range," obtaining what they described as "the first high-resolution quantitative record of in the region's natural Alaskan climate variations that spans the last two recovery from the millennia." And what did they find? coldest period of the The team of five scientists said their results "suggest entire Holocene? that at Farewell Lake SWT [surface water temperature] was as warm as the present at AD 0- 300 [during the Roman Warm Period], after which it decreased steadily by ~3.5°C to reach a minimum at AD 600 [during the depths of the Dark Ages Cold Period]." And from that point in time, they stated that "SWT increased by ~3.0°C during the period AD 600-850 and then [during the Medieval Warm Period] exhibited fluctuations of 0.5-1.0°C until AD 1200." Completing their narrative, they indicated that "between AD 1200- 1700, SWT decreased gradually by 1.25°C [as the world descended into the depths of the Little Ice Age], and from AD 1700 to the present, SWT increased by 1.75C," the latter portion of which warming initiated the Current Warm Period. In commenting on these findings, Hu et al. remarked that "the warmth before AD 300 at Farewell Lake coincides with a warm episode extensively documented in northern Europe … whereas the AD 600 cooling is coeval with the European 'Dark Ages'." They also reported that "the relatively warm climate AD 850-1200 at Farewell Lake corresponds to the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, a time of marked climatic departure over much of the planet." And they noted that "these concurrent changes suggest large-scale teleconnections in natural climatic variability during the last two millennia, likely driven by atmospheric controls." Noting that "20th-century climate is a major societal concern in the context of greenhouse warming," Hu et al. concluded by reiterating that their record "reveals three time intervals of comparable warmth: AD 0-300, 850-1200, and post-1800," and they added that "these data agree with tree-ring evidence from Fennoscandia, indicating that the recent warmth is not atypical of the past 1000 years," in unmistakable contradiction of those who claim that it is. The great importance of these observations resides in the fact that they testify to the reality of the non-CO2-induced millennial-scale oscillation of climate that brought the world, including Alaska, significant periods of warmth comparable to, or in some cases actually greater than, that of the present some 1000 years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, and some 1000 4 http://www.co2science.org/articles/V7/N49/EDIT.php. 4 years before that, during the Roman Warm Period. And, most importantly, these earlier periods of warmth were unquestionably not caused by elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations (which were far less during those periods than they are today).