Was the medieval warm period solely localised to Europe?

Question

I've heard some people say it is likely it was just very warm in Europe since accurate documentation does not exist for the rest of the planet at that time. Is this true?

Do we even know it ever actually existed?

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

Answer 1

It was mainly in Europe. However, the global temperature was higher as a result, although claims that it was as warm as today do not stand up. Here's the global temperature picture. Ten different studies. Medieval Warm Period? It's there, although not that much more intense than the "noise" in the data. As warm as today? No way.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png

Answer 2

Some historians theorize that a drought during this time may have caused the fall of the Mayan civilization actually. Since it theoretically corresponded to a rise in ocean temperatures worldwide, it would make sense that it would have affected the rest of the world as well. It may or may not have caused mere warm temperatures elsewhere; likely it was responsible for wild weather and natural disasters as is predicted for the current global warming.

Here is an article you might be interested in:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V6/N31/EDIT.jsp

By the way, I would take that article you have with a grain of salt. I've come across it before and it's full of holes. I was shocked that NOAA would even have such a thing on their site. There is a mountain of historical and archaeological evidence showing that the MWP and the LIA occured.

Answer 3

No lifestyles like guy or woman denies that the planet is going with the aid of evidently going on cooling and warming cycles. in spite of the undeniable fact that, there's a distinction between localized and worldwide adjustments. interior the case of MWP, there's no information to indicate this replaced into something different than a localized phenomenon. it is apparent with the aid of noting that glaciers that have existed for one thousand's of years weren't affected in this time. in evaluation, those comparable glaciers (which incorporate those interior the Andes and Himalayas) are actually melting at a speedy fee. I are attentive to it would effective and consumer-friendly if climatic adjustments must be defined in simplistic words. the fact is that there are a number of variables that would and do impact cooling and warming.

Answer 4

Below is a link to an article that covers several studies on the Medieval Warm Period. Here is a quote from the article:

"At this point of their paper, the international team of scientists had pretty much verified a number of things we have regularly reported on our website over the past several years, i.e., that in spite of the contrary claims of a host of climate alarmists, the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were (1) real, (2) global, (3) solar-induced, and (4) but the latest examples of uninterrupted alternating intervals of relative cold and warmth that stretch back in time through glacial and interglacial periods alike."

Answer 5

My guess is that MWP is only a localized phenomena. Different parts of the earth have different weather patterns dependent on geography and many complicated stochastic processes. That is why the term "Climate Change" is more correct than the term "Global Warming."

The main problem with climatology is that it tries to generalize all these random events all over the world into one neat system that may or may not be correct. It's like Astrology in that sense.

Answer 6

The Midieval Warm Period definitely happened in Europe. There's not a lot of evidence that it happened elsewhere, however. A summary of that evidence is available here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#Other_regions

Here is a plot of 10 seperate global temperature reconstructions which show that it's very unlikely that the MWP was nearly as warm as today (on a global scale):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Their error bars (not shown) do allow for the possibility that it was as warm as today, but as you can see from their most likely values (which are plotted), all 10 reconstructions have concluded that this is very unlikely.

Answer 7

No. Evidence shows that this period was warm worldwide.

"Evidence from a variety of sources, such as tree rings, ice cores, historical documents, glaciers, geology, and borehole temperatures, suggests that there may have been a period of climatic warming between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, when temperatures were higher than at the start of the 20th century, at least in some parts of the globe. These include Scandinavia, China, the Sierra Nevada in California, the Canadian Rockies and Tasmania."

http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/database/records/zgpz0231.html

Your reference, Mann's 'hockey stick' was proved to be fraudulent because it used a faulty formula in it's calculation a long time ago. Even random numbers would give you a 'hockey stick' graph. No one uses that graph any more.

Answer 8

Strictly a European phenomenon