Global warming, climate change, weather extremes

2010 Diary week 19

Global warming, climate change and weather extremes

Book Review

Part II of The Breakdown of Climate points out that “The decade 1310-20 was disastrous, especially in Northern Europe. Wet, miserable summers meant that crops failed to ripen and millions of people starved.” “In Scotland in the 1430s, as in Sweden, successive crop failures led to desperate measures such as baking a type of bread from the bark of trees.” “During the 17th century, northern Europe was gripped by severe winters, and glaciers again advanced in Iceland, Norway and the Alps, engulfing farmland and forcing entire families off the land.” “The storms and deaths continued through the 17th century and entire communities and towns disappeared overnight. On the east coast of Scotland, in Aberdeenshire, all that can be seen of the medieval town of Forvie is a 30m high sand dune that covered it during a southerly storm in August 1413.” “The changes from one general climatic regime to another, from the Medieval Optimum climate to the Little Ice Age several centuries later, indicate the sensitivity of the system to small changes in the mean surface temperature; changes that globally may amount to little more than one degree centigrade.”

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