'Medieval Warm Period' Wasn't Global or Even All That Warm, Study Says

The tenth to thirteenth centuries, when temperatures in Europe were unusually warm, was also a time of relative cold in the western North Atlantic, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

The findings further undermine the notion of a global Medieval Warm Period that climate change denialists often hold up to support the false idea that today's global warming is a result of natural, non-manmade causes.  It also further debunks the belief that early Norse settlements in Greenland flourished and later folded because of changes in the region's climate.

"The Medieval Warm Period was certainly not a global event and probably didn't even span the entire North Atlantic region," said Nicolás Young, a glacial geologist at Columbia University who was the lead author of the study.

Young and colleagues measured the extent of glaciers, a proxy for temperature, over the last 1,000 years in Western Greenland and further west on Baffin Island.  They found that glacial coverage from 950 to 1250, the years of the purported Medieval Warm Period, was only slightly less than during a subsequent cold period known as the Little Ice Age.

"These glaciers were almost just as big during the Medieval Warm Period as they were during the Little Ice Age in the Baffin Bay and Labrador Sea region," Young said.  "It probably wasn't all that warm during the Medieval Warm Period."

"If anyone is interested in the actual evidence this is going to be one more nail in the coffin of the Medieval Warm Period," said Gifford Miller, a paleo climatologist at the University of Colorado.  It shows "the ice is in an expanded state and it’s not retreating rapidly, it certainly says that Medieval times were not anomalously warm."

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