|
Links
Here
are some resources that you can use that relate to the 1000 year
time scale.
Long Term Perspective
on Drought
Other Paleoclimate
Perspectives
Human Dimension
|
|
Inquiry
What
was the Little Ice Age?
The Little Ice
Age (or LIA) refers to a period between 1350 and 1900 when temperatures
in the Northern Hemisphere were between 1.0 and 2.0°C cooler
than at present. A NASA
website that provides details on current research reports that
"during the Little Ice Age, access to Greenland was largely
cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s. At the same time, canals
in Holland routinely froze solid, glaciers advanced in the Alps,
and sea-ice increased so much that no open water was present in
any direction around Iceland in 1695." (See Shindell,
2001).
It is clear that Europe
and particularly Iceland and the Alps were hit hard, especially between
1645 and 1715 A.D. during the Maunder Minimum (Eddy,
1983 ), a period of depressed solar activity. There is also recent
evidence from ice caps in the South American Andes that temperatures
were also cooler in that region as well during much of the period.
(Thompson, 1986).
Prior to the Little Ice
Age, there was a period now called the "Medieval Warm Period"
(MWP) from 900 to 1300 A.D. A recent study by Esper,
et. al., 2002 suggests that their analysis of tree ring chronologies
allows the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP) to be described
and compared with 20th-century warming shown in modeling and attribution
studies." However, contemporaries such as Michael
Mann suggest tht their analysis is flawed and that multiple paleo
proxies provide a more accurate perspective on how current temperatures
compare with previous warm periods. Also see The
Past 100 Years: Putting the 20th Century in Perspective
for more.
- How many generations
are there in 1000 years? How many generations back can you track
your ancestry?
- It is estimated that
there were a total of 254 million people on the entire Earth in
the year 1000, and over 6 billion in the year 2000. If there were
an average of four generations each century, how many children
were born during each generation?
- What are some of the
factors that have lead to such an increase in population between
1000 A.D. and 2000 AD?
Image of Hunters in the
Snow, 1565, by Pieter
Bruegel the Elder from Museum of Metropolitan Art. |
