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The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region, that may also have been related to other climate events around the world during that time, including in China, New Zealand, and other countries lasting from about AD 950–1250. It was followed by a cooler period in the North Atlantic termed the Little Ice Age. Some refer to the event as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly as this term emphasizes that effects other than temperature were important.

Despite substantial uncertainties, especially for the period prior to 1600 when data are scarce, the warmest period prior to the 20th century very likely occurred between 950 and 1100, but temperatures were probably between 0.1°C and 0.2°C below the 1961 to 1990 mean and significantly below the level shown by instrumental data after 1980. The heterogeneous nature of climate during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ is illustrated by the wide spread of values exhibited by the individual records.

Initial research

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) occurred from about AD 950–1250, during the European Middle Ages. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarises this research, saying "... current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries". Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early and mid-20th century. Crowley and Lowery (2000) note that "there is insufficient documentation as to its existence in the Southern hemisphere."

Palaeoclimatologists developing region-specific climate reconstructions of past centuries conventionally label their coldest interval as "LIA" and their warmest interval as the "MWP". Others follow the convention and when a significant climate event is found in the "LIA" or "MWP" time frames, associate their events to the period. Some "MWP" events are thus wet events or cold events rather than strictly warm events, particularly in central Antarctica where climate patterns opposite to the North Atlantic area have been noticed.

By world region

Evidence exists across the world, often very sparsely, for changes in climatic conditions over time. Some of the "warm period" events documented below are actually "dry periods" or "wet periods".

Globally

A study by Michael Mann et al. finds that the MWP shows "warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally". Their reconstruction of MWP pattern is characterised by warmth over large part of North Atlantic, Southern Greenland, the Eurasian Arctic, and parts of North America which appears to substantially exceed that of modern late 20th century (1961–1990) baseline and is comparable or exceeds that of the past one-to-two decades in some regions. Certain regions such as central Eurasia, northwestern North America, and (with less confidence) parts of South Atlantic, exhibit anomalous coolness.

North Atlantic

A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that the sea surface temperature was approximately 1 °C (1.8 °F) cooler than today approximately 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and approximately 1 °C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period).

Using sediment samples from Puerto Rico, the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast from Florida to New England, Mann et al. (2009) found consistent evidence of a peak in North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity during the Medieval Warm Period followed by a subsequent lull in activity.

North America

The Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north. Around 1000AD the climate was sufficiently warm for the north of Newfoundland to support a Viking colony and led to the descriptor "Vinland". The MWP was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 19th century, and the Viking settlements eventually died out. In the Chesapeake Bay, researchers found large temperature excursions during the Medieval Warm Period (about 950–1250) and the Little Ice Age (about 1400–1700, with cold periods persisting into the early 20th century), possibly related to changes in the strength of North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley show a dry Medieval Warm period from AD 800–1300.

Prolonged droughts affected many parts of the western United States and especially eastern California and the western Great Basin. Alaska experienced three time intervals of comparable warmth: AD 1–300, 850–1200, and post-1800. Knowledge of the North American Medieval Warm Period has been useful in dating occupancy periods of certain Native American habitation sites, especially in arid parts of the western U.S. Review of more recent archaeological research shows that as the search for signs of unusual cultural changes during the MWP has broadened, some of these early patterns (e.g. violence and health problems) have been found to be more complicated and regionally varied than previously thought while others (e.g., settlement disruption, deterioration of long distance trade, and population movements) have been further corroborated.

Other regions

The climate in equatorial east Africa has alternated between drier than today, and relatively wet. The drier climate took place during the Medieval Warm Period (~AD 1000–1270).

An ice core from the eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula, identifies events of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. The core shows a distinctly cold period about AD 1000–1100, illustrating that "MWP" is a moveable term, and that during the "warm" period there were, regionally, periods of both warmth and cold.

Corals in the tropical Pacific Ocean suggest that relatively cool, dry conditions may have persisted early in the millennium, consistent with a La Niña-like configuration of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns. Although there is an extreme scarcity of data from Australia (for both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age) evidence from wave-built shingle terraces for a permanently full Lake Eyre during the ninth and tenth centuries is consistent with this La Niña-like configuration, though of itself inadequate to show how lake levels varied from year to year or what climatic conditions elsewhere in Australia were like.

Adhikari and Kumon (2001), whilst investigating sediments in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan, verified the existence there of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

"Temperatures derived from an O/O profile through a stalagmite found in a New Zealand cave (40.67°S, 172.43°E) suggested the Medieval Warm Period to have occurred between AD 1050 and 1400 and to have been 0.75°C warmer than the Current Warm Period." The MWP has also been evidenced in New Zealand by an 1100-year tree-ring record.

See also

• Holocene climatic optimum
• Little Ice Age
• Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports
• Historical climatology
• Paleoclimatology
• Temperature record

References

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Further reading

• Hughes MK, Diaz HF (1994). "Was there a 'medieval warm period', and if so, where and when?". Climatic Change. 26 (2–3): 109–142. doi:10.1007/BF01092410. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Fagan, Brian (2000). The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02272-3.

External links

• The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period

• History of climate
• Middle Ages
• Holocene