date: Wed Mar 2 08:38:55 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: ???? to: Tim Barnett Tim, Because people still keep going on about the LIA, I guess there is still some debate amongst proxy people. I reckon it has more chance of being larger scale than the MWP, but both are more likely to be just NH and maybe just the N. Atlantic environs for the MWP. What neither events are though are peoples of ubiquitously cold or warm periods, with all years for several centuries consistently cooler/warmer than modern base periods. Tried to say a lot of these things in the attached paper which maybe I've sent you before, so apologies if I have already. What irks most is the continual comments that say.. 'this reconstruction hasn't got the LIA or MWP period, which we all know is there..'. What is the point in doing any more proxy work if the answer is already known ! Ideas have to change as new data become available. I keep saying this, but a lot of ears are deaf to new series and people prefer to believe in concepts from the 1960s. The 1960s were a good decade for many things, but not for the last millennium. It's like saying - based on a very small amount of data here's what we think happened, but despite all the new info we will still keep these outdated concepts. If you were at Duke you would hear me present something about the 1730s and 1740s, For western Europe the 1730s were amazingly mild (almost as warm as today - warmer for autumns, for some reason), but the 1740s (especially 1740 itself) dramatically cooler. All must be naturally forced - but no volcanoes (or at least none we know about in the ice cores) and little change in solar output (at least in the series we have). So, maybe natural variability from just the ocean is more than we thought. Maybe the long PCM run will have events like this, not the same periods, but it should be getting something like this. So, LIA a coolish period from 1550 to 1720 and again from 1780 to 1840, but certainly not always cool. I believe these periods for the NH could be about 0.5C below 1961-90 when averaged and maybe some decades nearer to 1.0C below. Cheers Phil At 23:57 01/03/2005, you wrote: Hi Phil....i have gotten a little confused on the little ice age. was it indeed a global event, or largely confined to the N Hem and/or Europe. Is this still a controversy or do most good people believe the same story? tks for clearing things up Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------