History Channel ::: Little Ice Age
Shown in Guam Dec. 6, 2006.
The period from 1300s to 1800s was the coldest in thousands of years. It may have been caused by:
- Five mega volcanoes per century. The last of this scale was Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883.
- Collapse of the the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt: the Gulf Stream that brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to Greenland. If too much low-salt ice from Greenland falls into the North Atlantic, the salt engine is broken.
While Netherlands, Germany and England adopted
In Ireland of1845, after two centuries of growing potatoes, the major cultivar grown was mainly "The Lumper". Six million people in Ireland lived on it. Then the Potato Blight (Phytophthora infestans) destroyed most of the crop and 1.5 million people.
The "Maunder Minimum" was the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. It was named after an astronomer who noticed the low number of sun spots at this time.The slow growth of trees, and high resin content, from pines in the Italian Alps Mountain may explain the high quality sound of a Stradivarius a violin made by the family of Antonio Stradivari and relatives.
