ESS101C
Prof. Jin-Yi Yu
What Caused the Little Ice Age?
qThe Little Ice age cooling was simply the culmination of a slow orbital-scale cooling.
If this is true, the
medieval optimum warm
interval may have been just an insignificant
blip during an ongoing cooling
trend.
qThe Little Ice Age was the most recent in a series of distinct millennial oscillations.
If this is true, the
medieval optimum and
preceding centuries may represent
the warm extreme of a millennial
oscillation, with a shift toward the
cool extreme during the Little Ice
Age.
(from Earth’s Climate: Past and Future)