Climate and social change at the start of the Late Antique Little Ice Age
Abstract
The Late Antique Little Ice Age, spanning the period from 536 CE to roughly 560 CE, saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop by a degree C in less than a decade. This rapid cooling is thought to have caused widespread famine, epidemic disease, and social disruption. The relationship between cooling and social disruption is examined here using a set of high-resolution climate and historical data. A significant link between cooling and social disruption is demonstrated, but it is also demonstrated that the link is highly variable, with some societies experiencing dramatic cooling changing very little, and others experiencing only slight cooling changing dramatically. This points to variation in vulnerability, and serves to establish the Late Antique Little Ice Age as a context within which naturalistic quasi-experiments on vulnerability to climate change might be conducted.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 09, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1177/0959683620941079
Entities
People
- Peter N. Peregrine
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Lawrence University
- National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
- Yale University