The initiation of the "Little Ice Age" in regions round the North Atlantic

The "Little Ice Age" was the most recent period during which glaciers exten ded globally, their fronts oscillating about advanced positions. It is freq uently taken as having started in the sixteenth or seventeenth century and ending somewhere between 1850 and 1890, but Porter (1981) pointed out that the "Little Ice Age" may 'have begun at least three centuries earlier in th e North Atlantic region than is generally inferred'. The glacial fluctuatio ns of the last millennium have been traced in the greatest detail in the Sw iss Alps, where the "Little Ice Age" is now seen as starting with advances in the thirteenth century, and reaching an initial culmination in the fourt eenth century. In the discussion here, evidence from Canada, Greenland, Ice land, Spitsbergen and Scandinavia is compared with that from Switzerland. S uch comparisons have been facilitated by improved methods of calibrating ra diocarbon dates to calendar dates and by increasing availability of evidenc e revealed during the current retreat phase. It is concluded that the "Litt le Ice Age" was initialed before the early fourteenth century in regions su rrounding the North Atlantic.