Posted on 05/30/2011 1:12:10 PM PDT by decimon
Greenland's early Viking settlers were subjected to rapidly changing climate. Temperatures plunged several degrees in a span of decades, according to research from Brown University. A reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland also shows how climate affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures. Results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony’s demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can fill some of the blanks, but not all.
What climate scientists have been able to ascertain is that an extended cold snap, called the Little Ice Age, gripped Greenland beginning in the 1400s. This has been cited as a major cause of the Norse’s disappearance. Now researchers led by Brown University show the climate turned colder in an earlier span of several decades, setting in motion the end of the Greenland Norse. Their findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Brown scientists’ finding comes from the first reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from two lakes in Kangerlussuaq, near the Norse “Western Settlement.” Unlike ice cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet hundreds of miles inland, the new lake core measurements reflect air temperatures where the Vikings lived, as well as those experienced by the Saqqaq and the Dorset, Stone Age cultures that preceded them.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.brown.edu ...
Cold feat ping.
They shouldn’t have been driving around in those SUVs.
Apart from being IMPOSSIBLE because the climate is warming don't you know, this this has been a known fact for a very long time. Greenland - GREENland - used to be warm and now it's not - Duh!
This is on a par with discovering that the sun gives us daylight.
It also played a big role in the creation of The Great Lakes.
LLS
So....what they are saying.....is that global warming is going make the Vikings come back and pillage the seacoasts??
Or at least the NFC North.
Bush’s fault!
There was no sign in the DNA of any Viking - Inuit mixing.
NS? I read this on the internet 10 years ago.....thank you Brown university....
Ya think?
Yep. I learned it in the fifth grade, 1955. ‘Course you and I aren’t shooting for government grants.
LOL The land of the Vikings these days are putting out a pack of pussie cats. Hardly likely to attack anything except a man who wants to stop abortions.
What I fail to understand is why so-called intelligent researchers can conclude there were natural and sometimes severe variations in climate the past 2000 years and yet not recognize that the same variations may be naturally occurring today. Yet, they persist in saying humans are responsible for global warming/climate change that may be seen in recent years.
shelia jackson-lee questions disapperance of space probe?
Connecting the dots like a climate scientist.
Brett Favre drove them to extinction..
Aw dang, I was going to post that!
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