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120,000-11,700 years ago--During the Last Glacial Period, a series of sudden climate changes occurred simultaneously in many parts of the world, according to a study published recently in Science. A [...]

Julie Cruikshank (1) ABSTRACT. In northwestern North America, glaciers figure prominently in both indigenous oral traditions and narratives of geophysical sciences. These perspectives intersect in discussions about global warming, predicted [...]

Lithostratigraphic and paleobotanical studies suggest that the Jostedalsbreen ice cap probably disappeared during the early Holocene Hypsithermal interval (ca. 8000-6000 B.P. and re-formed about 5300 B.P. The equilibrium-line altitude was lower than the modern mean equilibrium-line altitude between 2595 [+ or -]85 and 2360 [+ or -]80 B.P., between 2250 [+ or -]65 and 2150 [+ or -]80 B.P., between 1740 [+ or -]75 and 1730 [+ or -]75 B.P., between 1430 [+ or -]45 and 1270 [+ or -]60 B.P., and subsequent to 890 [+ or -]60 B.P. The outlet valley glaciers reached their maximum Neoglacial extent during the Little Ice Age in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Zonal circulation indices with monthly and seasonal resolutions are calculated based on gridded monthly mean sea-level pressure (SLP) reconstructed back to 1780 by Jones et al. (1999): an overall zonal index for the whole European area between 30 [degrees] W and 40 [degrees] E, a normalized index for the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and a similar index for Central Europe. For most of the early time up to the mid-nineteenth century we get preferred negative anomalies in the NAO index for winter and preferred positive ones for summer. The turning points in cumulative anomalies - during the 1850s for winter and during the 1870s for summer - indicate a transition period in circulation modes from the 'Little Ice Age' to the recent climate in Europe. Running correlations (time windows of 21 years with time steps of one year) between zonal indices and regional temperature time series from Central England, Stockholm and two Central European regions are all indicating major instationarities in these relationships with a particular decline in winter correlations around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Aspects of different circulation patterns linked with these variabilites are discussed. Key Words: zonal indices; running correlations; temperature; Europe

Alpine glacier advances in the 'Little Ice Age' took place in the decades around 1320, 1600, 1700 and 1810. They were the outcome of snowier winters and cooler summers than those of the twentieth century. Documentary records from Crete in particular, and also from Italy, southern France and southeast Spain point to a greater frequency in Mediterranean Europe's mountainous regions of severe floods, droughts and frosts at times of 'Little Ice Age' Alpine glacier advances. Deluges, when more than 200 mm of rain fall within 24 hours, are most frequent on mountainous areas near the coast. An instance is given of the geomorphological consequences of a great deluge which struck the Tech valley in the eastern Pyrenees on 17 October 1940. An increased frequency of deluges, probably at times when Alpine glaciers were advancing in the 'Little Ice Age' and earlier in the Holocene, in areas known to be tectonically unstable and underlain by soft sediments, could better explain the occurrence of fluvial terraces in Mediterranean Europe sometimes known as the 'younger fill', than soil erosion resulting from deforestation. Key Words: Mediterranean Europe; 'Little Ice Age'; floods; soil erosion