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How many times must a hockey stick be broken, before alarmists stop wetting their beds? … The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

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Second climate status report on the Baltic Sea Region: Medieval Warm Period was Half A Degree Warmer Than Today

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt

[Translated, edited by P Gosselin]

In mid-May 2015 the second Climate Status Report on the Baltic Sea region was released. It was coordinated by the Helmholtz Center in Geesthacht, Germany. In a press release the institute explained:

The Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin (BACC II), a recently published report, serves as a revision and expansion of the 2008 edition of the BACC book. ‘The current publication for the Baltic Sea area is a regional variant on the global report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),’ says Prof. Hans von Storch, Director of the Institute of Coastal Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht and initiator of the report. The comprehensive scientific survey includes work from 141 scientists from twelve countries. The project team was coordinated by the International Baltic Earth Secretariat at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht and consists of meteorologists, hydrologists, oceanographers and biologists. Warming continues The current study takes into consideration observed climate changes for approximately the last two hundred years as well as possible changes that might occur by the year 2100. These projections are obtained from computer models. Warming air temperature in the Baltic Sea region has already been verified based on measurements, but the increase is seasonally and regionally different. The most drastic recorded increase in warming to have occurred in the northern Baltic Sea region was 1.5 degrees Celsius between 1871 and 2011 during the spring seasons. This number is well above the global warming estimates of up to one degree Celsius documented in the last IPCC report.”

The folks in Geestacht indeed forgot to mention a small detail in the press release, as you will soon see. The first two chapters of the report deal mainly with the climate development of the last 12,000 years and the last 1000 years:

Obviously the Baltic Sea study goes far beyond the claimed 200 years. So out of curiosity, we examined the first two chapters. In the abstract of the 12,000-year chapter we discovered something interesting (emphasis added):

The Holocene climate history showed three stages of natural climate oscillations in the Baltic Sea region: short-term cold episodes related to deglaciation during a stable positive temperature trend (11,000–8000 cal year BP); a warm and stable climate with air temperature 1.0–3.5 °C above modern levels (8000–4500 cal year BP), a decreasing temperature trend; and increased climatic instability (last 5000–4500 years). The climatic variation during the Late-glacial and Holocene is reflected in the changing lake levels and vegetation, and in the formation of a complex hydrographical network that set the stage for the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age of the past millennium.”

The pre-industrial climate of the Baltic Sea region was everything but stable. According to the study during the period of 8000-4500 years before today, it was about 1 to 3.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today. This corresponds to the so-called “mid-Holocene climate optimum”. This is a warm period that is practically unknown to the public and not very well-liked by the media outlets. Suddenly we find a completely new meaning in the press release’s subheading “Warming continues”. It is getting warmer – but nowhere near as warm as it was during the 8000-4500 year before present period.

At the end of the abstract the attention shifts to the Medieval Warm Period, which is a part of the subsequent chapter by Tadeusz Niedźwiedź and colleagues. In the text describing the last 1000 years we find the well-known climate cycle that the IPCC tried to discard: the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Modern Warm Period. The chapter writes:

According to the scientific literature, there are four climatic periods of the past millennium: the Medieval Warm Period (MWP 900-1350), the Transitional Period (TP 1350-1550), the Little Ice Age (LIA 1550-1850), and the Contemporary Warm Period (CW after 1850).”

Just how warm was it during the Medieval Warm period in the Baltic Sea region? Also here with this inconvenient question the authors do not shy away (emphasis added):

Recent investigations of Fennoscandia by Ljungqvist (2010) showed that the MWP [Medieval Warm Period] occurred between 800 and 1300. At that time, warm-season (May-September) temperatures exceeded the contemporary warming of the end of twentieth century by about +0.5°C. The start of the warming was noted between the ninth and tenth centuries, and the peak temperature appeared at the beginning of the second half of the twelfth century. In a winter temperature simulation over the Baltic Sea region (Schimanke et al. 2012) during that time anomalies reached their highest value of+0.8°C for the MWP.”

The text above is a clear statement. The Baltic Sea region was 0.5°C warmer 1000 years ago.

No one wanted in any way that this important condition get mentioned in the press release. How could it have been warmer 1000 years ago than it is today at a time when atmospheric CO2 concentration was extraordinarily low?