RAPID - Joint International Round - To what extent was the Little Ice Age a result of a change in the thermohaline circulation?

Introduction

For a full understanding of the global climate system, it is imperative to integrate research on empirical climate reconstruction with physical modelling studies of the Earth's climate, using numerical models of varying complexity to address important questions about the attribution of past and future climate changes to specific natural and anthropogenic factors. The focus of this project is on testing various hypotheses about the possible causes of the Little Ice Age. A carefully-designed set of model experiments (incorporating novel methods of assimilating information on climate time scales) is proposed, with the outputs assessed through comparison against empirical palaeoclimate evidence for climate variations over the past millennium. Specifically, we will explore whether the Little Ice Age climate could have been generated by one or more of the following factors: a weakening of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation; the persistence of a generally negative North Atlantic Oscillation; or reduced radiative forcing (by increased volcanic activity, reduced solar insolation and lower greenhouse gas concentrations relative to the present). The proposed project will involve a 3-year collaboration between the University of East Anglia (UK) and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (Netherlands).

Project Duration: 1 Aug 2005 - 31 Jul 2008

This project is funded by UK NERC, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Research Council of Norway - Grant Ref. NE/C509507/1 - through the RAPID Climate Change NERC directed mode programme.

Access to data and information

Data and software supplied from this project to the BADC will be stored in the BADC RAPID archive.

Access to the archive is currently restricted to participants to this particular project. If you are a programme participant and would like to access this RAPID project data, then please apply for access^* to the RAPID data.

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Citation

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Who to contact

This RAPID project is led by Dr Tim Osborn of the University of East Anglia, with co-investigators at the University of East Anglia and Royal Netherlands Meteorology Institute.

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