Global Warming in California: A Lesson from the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (A.D. 800–1350)

A robust collection of mammal, bird, fish, and shellfish remains from an 8,000-year residential sequence at Morro Bay, a small, isolated estuary on the central California coast, shows a strong focus on marine species during the Middle-Late Transition cultural phase (950–700 cal B.P.), which largely coincides with the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA). Previous studies have provided modest evidence for increased fishing and rabbit hunting during the MCA in adjacent regions, but the Morro Bay findings suggest a distinctive marine-focused subsistence refugium during the period of drought. Specifically, the sequence shows striking all-time peaks in marine and estuarine birds, fish NISP/m3, and fish/deer + rabbits during the MCA. Heavy exploitation of fish, aquatic birds, rabbits, and shellfish suggests that the bow and arrow, which seems to have arrived in the area at this time, had little impact on local subsistence strategies.

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Record of the Sedimentary Dynamics and Climatic Variability Within the Sedimentary Filling of Mchiguig Wetland During the Late Holocene

10.4018/978-1-7998-9498-8.ch015 ◽

2022 ◽

pp. 252-266

Author(s):

Elhoucine Essefi

Keyword(s):

Solar Activity ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Climatic Variability ◽

Ice Age ◽

Medieval Climatic Anomaly ◽

Climatic Anomaly ◽

Sedimentary Dynamics ◽

Atmospheric Factors ◽

Sun Activity ◽

Great Acceleration

This work aimed to study the cyclicity of the geochemical chemical parameters and the carbonate percentages along a 59 cm core from the sebkha of Mchiguig, Central Tunisia. In fact, from the bottom upwards, six climatic phases were recorded including the Warming Present (Great Acceleration), the Late Little Ice Age (Anthropocene), the Early Little Ice Age, the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, the Dark Age, and the Roman Warm Period. In fact, the spectral analysis of the studied parameters visualized many cycles. Those cycles are related to sun activity, oceanographic, and atmospheric factors. Solar activity generated 500 yr cycles; however, the oceanographic circulation generated other cycles of 1500 yr and 700-800 yr. The 1500 yr cycle may be the result of the solar activity and NAO-like circulation.

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Medieval Climatic Anomaly and Little Ice Age Dune Activity in the Arkansas River Valley, Central Great Plains, USA

Quaternary International ◽

10.1016/j.quaint.2012.08.297 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 279-280 ◽

pp. 185

Author(s):

Alan F. Halfen

Keyword(s):

Great Plains ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

River Valley ◽

Ice Age ◽

Arkansas River ◽

Medieval Climatic Anomaly ◽

Climatic Anomaly ◽

Dune Activity ◽

Arkansas River Valley

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A Land of Many Seasons: Bioarchaeology and the Medieval Climatic Anomaly Hypothesis in Central California

Contemporary Issues in California Archaeology ◽

10.4324/9781315431659-6 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 93-114

Author(s):

Al W. Schwitalla ◽

Terry L. Jones

Keyword(s):

Central California ◽

Medieval Climatic Anomaly ◽

Climatic Anomaly

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Medieval Climatic Anomaly and Punctuated Cultural Evolution in Coastal Southern California

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/282513 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 62 (2) ◽

pp. 319-336 ◽

Cited By ~ 61

Author(s):

L. Mark Raab ◽

Daniel O. Larson

Keyword(s):

Late Holocene ◽

Southern California ◽

American Southwest ◽

Cultural Changes ◽

Cultural Adaptations ◽

Stress Indicators ◽

Medieval Climatic Anomaly ◽

Climatic Anomaly ◽

California Channel Islands ◽

Persistent Drought

Only in the last few years have high-resolution paleoclimatic data become available from coastal southern California. Recent research in the California Channel Islands, drawing on some of these data, attributes settlement disruptions, disease, and violence to maritime subsistence distress attendant to elevated sea temperatures in the period from A.D. 1150 to 1300. A broad range of paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and human osteological data suggest that these stress indicators are more convincingly correlated with severe late Holocene drought episodes during a portion of the medieval climatic anomaly (ca. A.D. 800 to 1400). Based on these data, cultural changes in coastal southern California, including violence, declining health, and emergent social complexity, are similar to events documented in the American Southwest. Cultural adaptations in both regions appear to have been responding to persistent drought conditions during the late Holocene.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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