The Little Ice Age in Europe, Essay Example

Almost like an obscure footnote, the very name Little Ice Age is bound to catch the eye of anyone interested in both historical minutia and faded panoramas. Nathan Myhrvold, the one-time whiz-kid chief technology officer of Microsoft and current all-around human Prometheus, was so fascinated by it that he “forced his family to visit the northern tip of Newfoundland, where Leif Eriksson and his Vikings reputedly made camp a thousand years earlier” (Levitt and Dubner). Those with little more than a nodding acquaintance with European history (the Little Ice Age’s effects were largely European, and especially Northern European) will have trouble fitting its roughly AD1300 to 1870(Oosthoek)time-span into their mental attic, cluttered as it probably is with such relicsas the Magna Carta; the Battle of Agincourt; the Canterbury Tales;Shakespeare; and so on up to the Charge of the Light Brigade.

To learn about the Little Ice Age [LIA] is to learn about European history itself, as well as climate and the effects of its changes, and what those changes may mean for the future. But it also is to learn something about climate science: it is essentially heuristic in the way that medicine often is, because certain experiments cannot be performed.Heuristic, from the Greek heureskein, has been defined as to discover and to learn (Petty).[1]To learn what really caused the LIA would necessitate trying to recreate the conditions here in the present. That cannot bedone.If this paper must have a thesis, this will be mine: that climatology is effectively a heuristic science, one based on hard facts (geology, astronomy, chemistry, fossil records, etc.) well mixed with “principles, axioms, rules of thumb and, at times, ‘clinical imagination’” (Petty). A quote may illustrate the situation, but first be advised by another quote:“A proxyclimate indicator is a local record that is interpreted using physical or biophysical principles[2] to represent some combination of climate-related variations back in time” (Working Group 1). And now to the main quote: “Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval” (Mann, Zhihua and Rutherford).

As one might expect from the above, much about the science or perceived science of climate (which, virtually by definition, includes climate change), is in contention, and that goes as much for the LIA as the modern case now being made for global warming. When and where the LIA started; when and where it ended (Painter, Flanner and Kaser); how far it spread beyond Europe or if it spread at all; why it started; why it ended; what its effects were;and, finally, even whether it ever really occurred (Working Group 1)are in dispute and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. We can begin, however, with what is not in dispute: the LIA was not a realIce Age. It reversed itself, or was reversed by other forces, too soon, for reasons that are (as one might have guessed) still debated. Its intriguing name, first coined by F. Matthes in 1939 (Mann)has been superseded byneoglaciation, whichitself refers to any kind of glacial-growing period during the Holocene, the present geological epoch now about 12,000 years old. One can see that, in order to fully understand the LIA, we must (briefly)put it in historical perspective.

The period preceding the LIA has been called the Medieval Warm Period,(National Climatic Data Center)itself also of uncertain origin and existence.The usual dates given for it are from the 9^th to the 13^th centuries (Working Group 1). But what we consider to be the classic time of “ice ages” — populated with wooly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and walls of ice— took place far before that. The last real Ice Age lasted from about sixty thousand to twenty thousand years Before the Present (BP). Ice Age cycles began much earlier, occurring from at least 2.6 million years BP, flipping unpredictably on and off, allowing homo sapiens to adapt and, eventually, thrive(National Climatic Data Center). In short, Northern European humans (which would include those who lived in close-enough proximity to the Alps) have, at least from time to time, experiencedserious ice from the time they took up residence. However, modern Europeans have not. Recent evidence has suggested that the first, pre-historic Britons were pushed off their island by advancing ice thirty thousand years ago, and they were not able to return for another fifteen thousand years (Owen),a period that pre-dates Western Civilization’s historical record and collective memory. So when, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (written around 1600),the guard Francisco tells his midnight replacement For this relief, much thanks: ‘tis bitter cold(Shakespeare),it isn’t because a wall of ice threatens their castle in Denmark. However, if 23,300-year-old Ötzi, the “ice man”discovered in the Ötztal Alps in 1991 (South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology), had been a night guard of his camp in those mountains, he might well have cited a nearby glacier for the chilly weather. In fact, such glaciers remain a danger to this day, and are subjects of ongoing study as to their dangers (Chiarle, Iannotti and Mortara). But they no longer threaten civilization itself — as of now. For in spite of a current global warming trend, the Holocene — our own geological epoch — is still considered to be part of the historical cycle of Ice Age creation (National Climatic Data Center).If that sounds surprising, consider the almost unbelievably fact that in the 1970s the climatic fear sweeping the scientific community (and selling newspapers)was a resurgence of global cooling, heralding another neoglaciation, possibly as bad or worse than the earlier Little one. One geo-engineering proposal (never attempted) was to paint the poles black to capture as much heat from the sun as possible (Levitt and Dubner). We are left, as representative of my thesis that climate science is basically heuristic, with the titles of two previously cited sources: Unusual volcanic episode rapidly triggered Little Ice Age, researchers find(Owen) and Was there a “Little Ice Age” and a “Medieval Warm Period?” (Working Group 1). With such fundamental disagreements, it is surely beyond the scope of this paper to take issue with the actual climatology of the LIA or the science found in the sources to form a new and detailed scientific thesis entirely.To do so would only be to join the crowd. What we can do is survey the big picture.

Evidence for the LIA is both scientific in the classic sense — archeology and the collection of ice samples for example — and anecdotal. We know from archeology and historical records that advancing glaciers almost destroyed the settlements in Iceland and Greenland (which is presumably why Myhrvold  was so interested in the latter site) and wrecked villages in Northern Europe (Oosthoek). The inhabitants of such places were not wiped out although they did suffer great population losses — half of Iceland’s (Oosthoek) — and malnutrition (Zorich). But unlike the glaciers that pushed out the prehistoric Britons, as noted earlier, they were not quite expelled altogether. On mainland Europe, some towns were bulldozed by glaciers, and in Scandinavia tax records show a drop in activity as ice made farming impossible for many.

In a more anecdotal vein of LIA evidence, there are signs of substantial cooling to be found in paintings from the LIA era  (Robinson)— remember that it lasted (if it existedat all as a definite, defined phenomenon, that is) at least into the 1850s and further high in the Alps. Scientists have examined paintings for a preponderance of cloud cover and ice-related themes, and have found a good deal of supportive evidence to think about (Ball).

Yet it was during the early medieval LIA period that a critical new method of planting was devised whichgradually became standardized. Before the LIA and up to at least the eleventh century it is known that farmers would use their fields until they were exhausted of nitrogen,[3] and then abandon them or let them grow over with brush, burn them, and begin replanting. But during the medieval era, crop rotation, later termed the three-field system,was invented. It was based on letting one of three fields lie fallow on a rotating basis. The others would be planted with wheat, rye, beans, peas, etc. All of this first took place near growing cities, which also began to trade with one another more and more (Jacobs). With such trade came technological innovation. The Dutch in particular were able to reclaim much of their North Sea shoreline, so much that it has been claimed that there was a net gain to the Dutch from the LIA (Oosthoek). Art and architecture flourished, as did shipbuilding (somewhat ironically, given the frequent freezing of rivers such as the Thames in England). In general we can say that European civilization was up to the task of surviving the LIA and in some ways to prosper in spite of it.

One reason for that is that there really were two LIAs. Reconstructed and/or hypothesized average temperatures began dipping noticeably around 1300 and had hit a low by 1500. But then they steadily rose back to official Warm levels for over fifty years — a lifetime then. They then began an inexorable plunge towards a new historic low and by 1650 had reached it. (Overall temperatures were only 1-1.5 degree Celsius cooler than they are today, and that alone would not make a LIA. What did was that winters started sooner and stayed around longer.)Spring and Fall temperatures remained low for several decades before rising steadily. By 1700, averages were back in the Warm range again (Lamb). Had there been no half-century return to normal, development might well have slowed enough to be a serious drag on the world’s economies.

Were we to continue this line of inquiry, this discussion might become really just a historical review of life in Europe during the freeze and the possibilities for disaster had it been more severe. That would prove instructive in its own way, but would not resolvewhat its short- and long-term effects were. The unusual conditionslasted almost six hundred years (and some say a good deal longer, at least in the Swiss Alps (Painter, Flanner and Kaser)). That includes a lot of historical variables. There had been wars, witch-hunts, famines, and local and pandemic diseases before, during, and after the LIA; all of those have also occurred throughout the twentieth century; and the first and last of them are still going strong.[4] The real problem is that no one knows what caused the brief return to normal discussed by Lamb and others. If that could be known, then everything would be known. But weather and climate is scientifically “chaotic”and can never really be predicted. So to perfectly understand the initial conditions of a period of earth’s climate history will tell us nothing of its future (Chang). Any science done in such an environment will always be heuristic at its heart. Experiments are run and predictions are made knowing full well that such experiments and predictions are really just exercises in learning. Theywillbe valuable in and of themselves, whether they turn out to be accurate or not.

Specific forces contributing to the LIA (but not necessarily causing the LIA) have been proposed nevertheless, of course. Volcanic activity has been suggested (Owen), as well as the Northern Atlantic Oscillation, an “air pressure seesaw between the Azores High and the Icelandic Lowthat produces mild winters in Central and Northern Europe if the two air pressure centres are particularly pronounced and cold winters if they are weak” (Ulmer). But the most prominent suspect is the Maunder Minimum (Eddy)named after an astronomer who first discovered from the early records of sunspot observations that during the LIA there had been an usually low number of them. Later astronomers proposed that “the Sun expanded during the Maunder Minimum and its rotation slowed. A larger and slower Sun, it is speculated, might also mean a cooler Sun that provides less heat to Earth. (Just why the Sun expands and contracts is not entirely understood)” (Oosthoek). But the sunspot theory is problematical.

No extended discussion of the LIA will exclude or evade the issue of modern global warming for long. While a lack of sunspot activity has been advanced as a cause/contributing factor to the LIA, increased sunspot activity has also been advanced as a cause or contributing factor of the recent phase of global warming(Camp and Tung). Camp and Tung acknowledged the lack of a clear data “signal” in their study: “Volcanic eruptions, particularly El Chicho i?n in March 1982 and Pinatubo in June 1991, coincidentally occurring during solar maxes, may contaminate the11-year signal.” But any such conclusion conflicts with the now-dominant theory that global warming is primarily or solely the result of human-caused carbon emissions. One response may be representative: “Camp and Tung explore the ramifications further in a follow-up paper . . . they calculate a climate sensitivity between 2.3 to 4.1°C. Eg – if CO2 levels are doubled, global temperatures will increase around 3.2°C. This confirms the IPCC estimate of climate sensitivity” (Cook). One can see the problem: the assumption under question was what would happen if atmospheric carbon-dioxidedoubledwithin a non-specified interval.

The essentially heuristic nature of climate science is surely revealed in the last quoted sentence, which arguably supports this paper’s thesis. As for the LIA itself as a product of climate science, what strikes the layman reader is the lack of agreement about it. That the weather got much colder for most people in Northern Europe and England is indisputable. The “LIA” came and went, and plenty of people and their children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren lived through it. But as to exactly why it came and went, no one really knows.

Works Cited

Ball, Tim. Dr. Tim Ball: A Different Perspective. 26 April 2014. Website. 26 January 2015.

Camp, Charles D and Ka Kit Tung. “Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean.” Geophysical Research Letters (2007): 5. Article.

Chang, Kenneth. “Edward N. Lorenz, a Meteorologist and a Father of Chaos Theory, Dies at 90.” New York Times 17 April 2008. Newspaper.

Chiarle, Marta, et al. “Recent debris flow occurrences associated with glaciers in the Alps.” Global and Planetary Change (2007): 123-136. Journal.

Cook, John. Skeptical Science: Getting Skeptical About Global Warming Skepticism. 14 February 2014. Website. 26 January 2015.

Eddy, John A. “The Maunder Minimum.” Science (1976): 1198-1202. Article.

Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969.

Lamb, H. Climatic Fluctuations. New York: Elsevier, 1969. Book.

Levitt, Steven J and Stephen D. Dubner. Super Freakanomics. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Book.

Mann, Michael E. “Little Ice Age.” Munn, Ted. Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. 504-509. Book.

Mann, Michael E, et al. “Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly.” Science (2009): 1256-1260. Article.

National Climatic Data Center. A Paleo Perspective on Global Warming. 20 Aiugust 2008. 26 January 2015.

— Summary of 100,000 Years. 20 August 2008. Website. 26 January 2015.

Oosthoek, Jan. Environmental History Resources. 2008. Website. 26 January 2009.

Owen, James. National Geographic News. 2003 November 2003. Website. 26 January 2015.

Painter, Thomas H, et al. AGU Fall Meeting. 9-13 September 2013. Website. 9-13 Sept. 2015.

Petty, Thomas L. Heuristic Medical Practice. February 1996. Website. 26 January 2015.

Robinson, Peter J. “Ice and snow in paintings of Little Ice Age winters.” Weather (2005): 37-41. Article.

South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. Frozen Stories. 2015. Website. 26 January 2015.

Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. n.d. Website. 15 January 2015.

Ulmer, Simone. Sea-ice formation sustained the ‘Little Ice Age’. 30 September 2013. Website. 27 January 2015.

Working Group 1. Climate Change 2001. 2001. Website. 26 January 2015.

Zorich, Zach. Archaeology . September 2012. Website. 26 January 2015.

[1] From Petty we learn that “there has never been a controlled clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a PAP smear in the diagnosis and care of early uterine cancer . . . No one would want to do such a scientific trial, because the value is obvious and death rates from uterine cancer  are continually dropping, and are now at an all time low.”

[2] Italics added. From page 2 of this paper: “. . . principles, axioms, rules of thumb and, at times, ‘clinical imagination’” (Petty).

[3] They of course did not know the cause of the problem, just the effects of it.

[4] This statement would not seem to require an academic source.