The Little Ice Age and medieval warming in South Africa

The Little Ice Age in South Africa, from around no 1300 to 1800, and mediev al warming, from before 1000 to around 1300, are shown to be distinctive fe atures of the regional climate of the fast millennium. The proxy climate re cord has been constituted from oxygen and carbon isotope and colour density data obtained from a well-dated stalagmite derived from Cold Air Cave in t he Makapansgat Valley. The climate of the interior of South Africa was arou nd 1 degrees C cooler in the Little Ice Age and may have been over 3 degree s C higher than at present during the extremes of the medieval warm period. It was variable throughout the millennium, but considerably more so during the warming of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Extreme events in the record show distinct teleconnections with similar events in other parts of the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The lowest tempe rature events recorded during the Little Ice Age in South Africa are coeval with the Maunder and Sporer Minima in solar irradiance. The medieval warmi ng is shown to have coincided with the cosmogenic Be-10 and C-14 isotopic m axima recorded in tree rings elsewhere in the world during the Medieval Max imum in solar radiation.