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Friday, Jun. 20, 2025

Is modern warming just a rebound from the Little Ice Age?

Sue Bin Park, Skeptical Science
no

Global temperatures are warmer today than immediately before the Little Ice Age.

The Little Ice Age was a regional cooling phenomenon caused by internal forcings that mostly moved heat around within Earth’s climate system.

This event affected North America and Europe from 1350 to 1850. While external forcings like volcanic eruptions and decreased solar activity occurred, it was a massive export of Arctic sea ice into the North Atlantic by warm currents that disrupted ocean circulation and triggered prolonged regional cooling.

The end of the Little Ice Age coincided with rising solar output and industrial greenhouse gas emissions. However, since the 1950s, solar activity has declined while global temperatures have increased.

Today’s warming is driven by human emissions, increasing the amount of heat in the system rather than redistributing it.

The late 20th century is the warmest interval in the last 2,000 years for over 98% of the globe.

See a full discussion of this at Skeptical Science

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Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization. Our goal is to remove a roadblock to climate action by building public resilience against climate misinformation. We achieve this by publishing debunking of climate myths as well as providing resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. Skeptical Science was founded and is led by John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.

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