The Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D.)

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The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of warm climate from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. when global temperatures were apparently somewhat warmer than at present. Its effects were evident in Europe where grain crops flourished, alpine tree lines rose, many new cities arose, and the population more than doubled. The Vikings took advantage of the climatic amelioration to colonize Greenland, and wine grapes were grown as far north as England where growing grapes is now not feasible and about 500 km north of present vineyards in France and Germany. Grapes are presently grown in Germany up to elevations of about 560 m, but from about 1100 A.D. to 1300 A.D., vineyards extended up to 780 m, implying temperatures warmer by about 1.0–1.4 °C (Oliver, 1973). Wheat and oats were grown around Trondheim, Norway, suggesting climates about 1 °C warmer than present (Fagan, 2000).

Elsewhere in the world, prolonged droughts affected the southwestern United States and Alaska warmed. Sediments in central Japan record warmer temperatures. Sea surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea were approximately 1 °C warmer than today, and the climate in equatorial east Africa was drier from 1000 A.D. to 1270 A.D. An ice core from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula shows warmer temperatures during this period.

Oxygen isotope studies in Greenland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Tibet, China, New Zealand, and elsewhere, plus tree-ring data from many sites around the world all confirm the presence of a global Medieval Warm Period. Soon and Baliunas (2003) found that 92% of 112 studies showed physical evidence of the MWP, only two showed no evidence, and 21 of 22 studies in the Southern Hemisphere showed evidence of Medieval warming. Evidence of the MWP at specific sites is summarized in Fagan (2007) and Singer and Avery (2007). Evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was a global event is so widespread that one wonders why Mann et al. (1998) ignored it.

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