"Little Ice Age" research: A perspective from Iceland

The development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the scienc es of meteorology and climatology and their subdisciplines has made possibl e an ever-increasing understanding of the climate of the past. In particula r, the refinement of palaeoclimatic proxy data has meant that the climate o f the past thousand years has begun to be extensively studied. In the conte xt of this research, it has often been suggested that a warm epoch occurred in much of northern Europe, the north Atlantic, and other parts of the wor ld, from around the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, and that this w as followed by a decline in temperatures culminating in a "Little Ice Age" from about 1550 to 1850 (see e.g. Lamb, 1965, 1977; Flohn, 1978). The appel ations "Medieval Warm Period" and "Little Ice Age" have entered the literat ure and are frequently used without clear definition. More recently, howeve r, these terms have come under closer scrutiny (see, e.g. Ogilvie, 1991, 19 92; Bradley and Jones, 1992; Mikami, 1992; Briffa and Jones, 1993; Bradley and Jones, 1993; Hughes and Diaz, 1994; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 19 99; Crowley and Lowery, 2000). As research continues into climatic fluctuat ions over the last 1000 to 2000 years, a pattern is emerging which suggests a far more complex picture than early research into the history of climate suggested. In this paper, the origins of the term "Little Ice Age" are con sidered. Because of the emphasis on the North Atlantic in this volume, the prime focus is on research that has been undertaken in this region, with a perspective on the historiography of historical climatology in Iceland as w ell as on the twentieth-century climate of Iceland. The phrase "Little Ice Age" has become part of the scientific and popular thinking on the climate of the past thousand years. However, as knowledge of the climate of the Hol ocene continues to grow, the term now seems to cloud rather than clarify th inking on the climate of the past thousand years. It is hoped that the disc ussion here will encourage future researchers to focus their thinking on ex actly and precisely what is meant when the term "Little Ice Age" is used.