Climate change during the Little Ice Age from the Lake Hamana sediment record

2019 ◽  
Vol 223 ◽  
pp. 39-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ara Cho ◽  
Kaoru Kashima ◽  
Koji Seto ◽  
Kazuyoshi Yamada ◽  
Takumi Sato ◽  
...  
The Holocene ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 095968362110116
Author(s):  
Maegen L Rochner ◽  
Karen J Heeter ◽  
Grant L Harley ◽  
Matthew F Bekker ◽  
Sally P Horn

Paleoclimate reconstructions for the western US show spatial variability in the timing, duration, and magnitude of climate changes within the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, ca. 900–1350 CE) and Little Ice Age (LIA, ca. 1350–1850 CE), indicating that additional data are needed to more completely characterize late-Holocene climate change in the region. Here, we use dendrochronology to investigate how climate changes during the MCA and LIA affected a treeline, whitebark pine ( Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) ecosystem in the Greater Yellowstone Ecoregion (GYE). We present two new millennial-length tree-ring chronologies and multiple lines of tree-ring evidence from living and remnant whitebark pine and Engelmann spruce ( Picea engelmannii Parry ex. Engelm.) trees, including patterns of establishment and mortality; changes in tree growth; frost rings; and blue-intensity-based, reconstructed summer temperatures, to highlight the terminus of the LIA as one of the coldest periods of the last millennium for the GYE. Patterns of tree establishment and mortality indicate conditions favorable to recruitment during the latter half of the MCA and climate-induced mortality of trees during the middle-to-late LIA. These patterns correspond with decreased growth, frost damage, and reconstructed cooler temperature anomalies for the 1800–1850 CE period. Results provide important insight into how past climate change affected important GYE ecosystems and highlight the value of using multiple lines of proxy evidence, along with climate reconstructions of high spatial resolution, to better describe spatial and temporal variability in MCA and LIA climate and the ecological influence of climate change.


2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory C. Wiles ◽  
Ryan P. McAllister ◽  
Nicole K. Davi ◽  
Gordon C. Jacoby

The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1743-1757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik N Johanson ◽  
Sally P Horn ◽  
Chad S Lane

We present a lake-sediment record of pre-Columbian agriculture and fire history from the lowlands of southern Pacific Costa Rica that captures the arrival of maize agriculture at ca. 3360 cal yr BP in the Diquís subregion of the Gran Chiriquí archeological region. Our 4200-year record from Laguna Los Mangos begins 1000 to 2000 years earlier than other lake records from the region and provides the first microfossil and geochemical evidence of vegetation and fire prior to the establishment of maize agriculture. This early portion of the record shows evidence of fire events associated with land clearance or field preparation and maintenance for subsistence activities. Alternatively, these were wildfires ignited unintentionally by people or naturally by lightning or volcanism. Evidence of early maize by ca. 3200 cal yr BP was found at Laguna Zoncho in the southeastern section of the Diquís subregion. Our discovery of early maize agriculture at ca. 3360 cal yr BP in the Laguna Los Mangos watershed in the northwestern portion of the Diquís subregion indicates a rapid adoption of maize agriculture in the region after initial introduction. Pre-Columbian agriculture and fire activity at Los Mangos is nearly continual until historic times, but with a decline after ca. 1170 cal yr BP, coincident with the early Terminal Classic Drought (TCD). We infer a pronounced drying of the lowland environment at Laguna Los Mangos based on a depositional hiatus in the record at ca. 950 during late TCD. Agricultural proxies indicate reduced watershed activity during the ‘Little Ice Age’ following Spanish contact in southern Central America until the 20th century.


The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 1643-1648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N Peregrine

The Late Antique Little Ice Age, spanning the period from 536 CE to roughly 560 CE, saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop by a degree C in less than a decade. This rapid cooling is thought to have caused widespread famine, epidemic disease, and social disruption. The relationship between cooling and social disruption is examined here using a set of high-resolution climate and historical data. A significant link between cooling and social disruption is demonstrated, but it is also demonstrated that the link is highly variable, with some societies experiencing dramatic cooling changing very little, and others experiencing only slight cooling changing dramatically. This points to variation in vulnerability, and serves to establish the Late Antique Little Ice Age as a context within which naturalistic quasi-experiments on vulnerability to climate change might be conducted.


2011 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad S. Lane ◽  
Sally P. Horn ◽  
Kenneth H. Orvis ◽  
John M. Thomason

AbstractClimate change during the so-called Little Ice Age (LIA) of the 15th to 19th centuries was once thought to be limited to the high northern latitudes, but increasing evidence reflects significant climate change in the tropics. One of the hypothesized features of LIA climate in the low latitudes is a more southerly mean annual position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which produced more arid conditions through much of the northern tropics. High-resolution stable oxygen isotope data and other sedimentary evidence from Laguna de Felipe, located on the Caribbean slope of the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic, support the hypothesis that the mean annual position of the ITCZ was displaced significantly southward during much of the LIA. Placed within the context of regional paleoclimate and paleoceanographic records, and reconstructions of global LIA climate, this shift in mean annual ITCZ position appears to have been induced by lower solar insolation and internal dynamical responses of the global climate system. Our results from Hispaniola further emphasize the global nature of LIA climate change and the sensitivity of circum-Caribbean climate conditions to what are hypothesized to be relatively small variations in global energy budgets.


2001 ◽  
Vol 47 (159) ◽  
pp. 579-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Rasmussen ◽  
H. Conway

AbstractA simple flux model using twice-daily measurements of wind, humidity and temperature from standard upper-air levels in a distant radiosonde estimated winter balance of South Cascade Glacier, Washington, U.S.A., over 1959–98 with error 0.24 m w.e. Correlation between net and winter balance is strong; the model estimates net balance with error 0.53 m w.e. Over the past 40 years, average net balance of South Cascade Glacier has been strongly negative (−0.46 m w.e.), and it has been shrinking steadily. In comparison, 200 km west-southwest at Blue Glacier, the average balance has been less negative (−0.13 m w.e); that glacier has undergone little change over the 40 years. Balance histories of the two glaciers are positively correlated (r = +0.54), and South Cascade has been more out of balance than Blue, presumably because it is still adjusting to climate change since the Little Ice Age. Recent warming and drying has made the net balance of both glaciers strongly negative since 1976 (−0.84 m w.e. at South Cascade, −0.56 m w.e. at Blue). If South Cascade Glacier were in balance with the 1986–98 climate, it would be about one-quarter of its present area.


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