Read here. Map source here. Brand new peer-reviewed study that analyzes subfossils from a Swiss lake confirms what hundreds of previous peer-research have found: that the Medieval Warming had temperatures significantly warmer than modern ones.
"Thousand years of climate change reconstructed from chironomid subfossils.....Based on their analysis of fossil chironomids (non-biting midges) -- which were identified and quantified in four sediment cores extracted from the bed of Lake Silvaplana -- the authors constructed a detailed history of that region's mean July air temperature.....Larocque-Tobler et al. report that "at the beginning of the record, corresponding to the last part of the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' (here the period between ca. AD 1032 and 1262), the chironomid-inferred mean July air temperatures were 1°C warmer than the climate reference period (1961-1990)," which would also make them warmer than most subsequent temperatures as well. And in looking at their graphs of 20- and 50-year running means, it can be seen that the peak mean warmth of the Medieval Warm Period exceeded that of the Current Warm Period by approximately 0.5°C in the case of 20-year averages and 1.2°C in the case of 50-year averages."
Additional climate history postings. Historical temperature charts here.
