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A new study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth’s Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century. According to the new study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self-perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to University of Colorado Boulder Professor Gifford Miller, who led the study. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin...

A photo of the Rinjani caldera in Indonesia, while Lavigne won’t name the volcano until his paper is published, insiders suggest this a likely candidate for the missing 1258 AD eruption. Image: Wikipedia From ScienceNews: Indonesia implicated as location of biggest eruption in last seven millennia By Alexandra Witze SELFOSS, Iceland — One of the biggest mysteries in volcanology may finally have a solution. An eruption long thought to have gone off in the year 1258, spreading cooling sulfur particles around the globe, happened the year before in Indonesia, scientists report.Until now, researchers have known a big volcano went off...