Medieval Warm Period

A graph of temperatures over the past two thousand years. The so-called Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were regional phenomena, and were not experienced worldwide.

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum was a time of unusually warm climate in the North Atlantic region. It was not a planet-wide phenomena. It lasted from about the tenth century to about the fourteenth century. In discussions of global warming this period is often mentioned.

Some refer to the event as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly because this term emphasizes that effects other than temperature were important.^[1]

Medieval Warm Period Media

Greenland ice sheet temperatures interpreted with 18O isotope from 6 ice cores (Vinther, B., et al., 2009). The data set ranges from 9690 BC to AD 1970 and has a resolution of around 20 years. That means that each data point represents the average temperature of the surrounding 20 years.
The last written records of the Norse Greenlanders are from an Icelandic marriage in 1408 but were recorded later in Iceland, at Hvalsey Church, which is now the best-preserved of the Norse ruins.
1690 copy of the 1570 Skálholt map, based on documentary information about earlier Norse sites in America.
L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, today, with a reconstruction of a Viking settlement.