Are We Getting Back to a Little Ice Age?

Hendrick Avercamp - Winter Landscape - 1605

In the late 13th century, massive volcanic explosions in the tropics destroyed mountain villages in northern Europe—not by burying them in lava and mudflows, mind you, but by triggering a cold spell that engulfed the towns in ice.

By that time, Europe was plagued by waves of cold that turned out the major rivers in Europe in thick layers of ice. Painters like Hendrick Avercamp (who I've mentioned on my blog Manifesto Surrealista regarding an exhibition about the "Little Ice Age", which I've visited in Amsterdam) was one of the artists that came to outdoors depicting the white scenarios given by those frozen years.

Scientists have always debated about the causes that have lead to this ice age. Many were the theories advanced but, according to a group of geologists, led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has identified an abrupt start for the cool spell, sometime between 1275 and 1300 A.D and causes, related with the volcanic activity has been considered a sustainable explanation for the cause.

Explosive volcanism cooled the climate and set off a self-perpetuating feedback cycle involving sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that sustained the cool spell into the 19th century, they reported this week in the "Journal Geophysical Research Letters". Miller said in a press release:

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age. We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.”

In the first part of the study, Miller and his colleagues collected roughly 150 dead plants from the receding ice margins of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Radiocarbon dating back in the lab reveled a large cluster of “kill dates” between 1275 and 1300 A.D., indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event. 

Miller and his team admitted that only sudden volcanic eruptions may be the explanation for major climate changes. Particles spread in the air make a thick layer around Earth atmosphere that blocks some of the sun's incoming energy. The timing jibed with a period of intense volcanic activity already known from the rock record.

Looking at this analysis it's interesting to point out if we aren't facing, once again, the prelude of another Little Ice Age with the major Earth volcanoes splitting lava and emerging earth on thick sun blocks.  more here