Symposium-The Medieval Warm Period Redux: Where And When Was It Warm?

In recent years, a bewildering array of studies has been published describing elements of the climate of the so-called “Medieval Climate Anomaly” (MCA). The general time frame for this epoch is generally taken to span the years from ~950-1300 C.E. Given the substantial heterogeneity of proxy climate records and climate reconstructions published in the last two decades, in concert with the fact that the MCA has been alluded to by some questioning whether recent warming is due to an enhanced greenhouse anthropogenic forcing, we propose to evaluate and discuss the various records with the aim of producing a more definitive monograph of the MCA vis-à-vis 20th century climate. It is the goal of the organizers to focus attention on this topic, so that the latest results will be considered in the next (5th) assessment report of the IPCC.

Among the topics to be discussed are:

-Reconciling multiple proxy climate records - what do the differences indicate regarding the scale of MCA climate?

-What do the latest modeling results tell us about possible forcing mechanisms during this period?

-What are some other impacts of climatic variability during the MCA regarding such topics as changes in ocean basin tropical cyclone activity?

-What were some of the key regional patterns of climatic anomalies during this time? How do they compare with 20th century patterns?

-In what specific ways does the post-1980 period, considered a time when global warming signal is evident, different from the largest anomalous multidecadal period of the MCA?