Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

European contact with the Americas may have triggered global cooling

#1
C C Offline
https://eos.org/articles/european-contac...al-cooling

INTRO: When Europeans arrived in the Americas in 1492, they found two continents populated by as many as 60 million people: 10% of the world’s population. Within 100 years, 90% of indigenous Americans were dead from genocide and disease. A new study in Quaternary Science Reviews links this abrupt loss in life to a dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide that may have contributed to the coldest snaps of the Little Ice Age.

The Little Ice Age describes a period of global cooling between roughly the 13th and 19th centuries that saw frozen rivers across Europe, crop failure and famine in Asia, and glacial expansion in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This widespread cooling trend was likely triggered by a combination of increased volcanism, changes in ocean circulation patterns, and variations in Earth’s orbit.
Embedded within the Little Ice Age are three notably colder intervals starting in 1610, 1770, and 1850, each separated by periods of slight warming. The new study proposes that the first of these dips may be rooted in the drastic population declines wrought by the European arrival in the Americas.

“Most of the Little Ice Age [was] caused by volcanic eruptions, fluctuations in solar output, and associated feedback processes,” says Alexander Koch, a geographer at University College London and lead author of the new study. “But the early 1600s, when temperatures were the coldest, coincides with the lowest carbon dioxide concentrations.”

Koch and his colleagues attribute this dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas associated with warming—to the loss of more than 50 million people in the Americas in the preceding century. The hypothesis is not a new one, Koch says. [...] “With drastically fewer people in the Americas, there was a lot less agriculture and a lot less burning,” Koch says... (MORE - details)
Reply
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Research Passing star may have altered Earth's orbit, triggering global warming 56 mil yrs ago C C 0 36 Feb 19, 2024 06:00 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Long-term changes in waves and storm surges have not impacted global coastlines C C 0 65 Jul 25, 2023 12:25 AM
Last Post: C C
  Rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine reverses 900 years of cooling C C 1 130 Aug 9, 2022 10:57 PM
Last Post: RainbowUnicorn
  Solar geoengineering may be effective alleviating impacts of global warming on crops C C 0 239 May 22, 2021 10:17 PM
Last Post: C C
  Researchers find wildfire smoke is more cooling on climate than models assume C C 0 116 Jan 13, 2021 12:50 AM
Last Post: C C
  Carbon Dioxide: U.S. Emissions Down, European Emissions Up Syne 0 361 Jul 4, 2018 10:28 PM
Last Post: Syne
  Climate change poses threat to European electricity production C C 0 446 Jul 25, 2017 09:34 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)