What is it about?
The paper reviews published case studies that have reconstructed Medieval temperatures in Africa and Arabia. Based on this comprehensive dat mosaic, temperature changes have been mapped in the region. Most of the continental areas got warmer during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), 1000-1200 AD. Only the southern Levant and upwelling zones around Afroarabia cooled, due to a change in wind systems.
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Why is it important?
We are living in a world with a changing climate. In order to better understand today's changes, we need to have good knowledge of pre-industrial natural climate change. What was the range of pre-industrial natural temperature fluctuations? Have we already exceeded the natural limits? What regional warming/cooling patterns occurred and what are likely drivers? Ultimately, a detailed set of maps with discrete time intervals is needed that thoroughly capture climate change of the past millennia on a global basis. This paper looks at the Medieval times in Africa and Arabia. Climate models need this type of information for calibration, to make sure that climate predictions derived from these models are robust and include all relevant natural and anthropogenic climate drivers.
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This page is a summary of: Warming and Cooling: The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Africa and Arabia, Paleoceanography, November 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/2017pa003237.
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