Queensland, Australia
The cause(s) of the Little Ice Age is (are) uncertain, but Wikipedia puts forward some ideas with varying degrees of plausibility, including ‘inherent variability in global climate’ (indeed), and ‘decreases in the human population’ (what?). Now some interesting evidence of it has been found in Australia.
A study by University of Adelaide researchers and Queensland Government scientists has revealed what south-east Queensland’s rainfall was like over the last 7000 years – including several severe droughts worse and longer lasting than the 12-year Millennium Drought, reports Phys.org.
The study – published in Scientific Reports—used preserved paper-bark tea tree leaves from North Stradbroke Island’s Swallow Lagoon that have been collecting in the sediment for the past 7700 years.
The leaves – analysed for chemical variation—provided a wealth of information on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and how it was impacted by major climate changes over the millennia, including the Little Ice Age from about 1450 to 1850.
Researchers found a generally wet period about 5000 to 6000 years ago – indicating a more consistent La Niña-like climate.
“This changed to a more variable and increasingly drier climate about 3000 years ago – highlighting a strengthened El Niño phase,” says Associate Professor John Tibby from the University of Adelaide’s Geography Department.
“There were substantial droughts during this phase, drier than the Millennium Drought which south-east Australia experienced from 1997-2009. In fact, from what we can ascertain, the probability of a drought worse than the Millennium Drought is much higher than the current prediction of one in 10,000 years.
“Our rainfall reconstruction suggests that it may be as much as 10 times more likely.”
Associate Professor Tibby said the Little Ice Age, which ended about the time south-east Queensland was settled, was unusually wet.
The study was possible because Swallow Lagoon contains a continuous sequence of leaves from a single species of tree. Variations in the chemistry of these leaves allowed scientists to reconstruct past rainfall.
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
It looks very much like low frequency orbital forcing constrained variations in ENSO activity – resulting in a generally wetter and more stable climate – up until the mid-Holocene, when the Walker circulation weakened as orbital forcing declined, perhaps reaching a critical point where solar variability perhaps became the dominant driver of centennial changes in ENSO activity. Exceptional low solar activity during the LIA seems to have instigated a long phase of low variability where La Nina-like conditions prevailed and rainfall in Eastern Australia was high. The Millennium Drought may soon become a distant memory as wetter conditions once again start to dominate as solar activity nose-dives.
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it!.
Oh dear, haw is this going to fit in with the IPCC dogma that the LIA along with the MWP were just localised events in Europe? The wheels are coming off the globull warming band wagon.
If you look carefully at the actual proxy rainfall record, you will see that there is a rough periodicity, somewhere around ~ 1416 years.
_____Predicted Peaks_________Observed Peaks
_______(thousands of years before present)______
0.35 ( = 1670 A.D.)_________________0.35
1.77_____________________________1.72
3.18_____________________________3.11
4.60_____________________________ roughly 4.4 (weak broad peak)
6.01_____________________________6.1 and 6.6
7.43_____________________________7.4
Now, the lunar Perigee cycle realigns itself with respect to the stars and the seasons
once every 177 years and 8 x 177 years = 1416 years
This happens because:
FMC = Time for the lunar line-of-apse to realign with the Sun.
Full Moon Cycle = 1.127385 sidereal years
LAC = Time for the lunar line of apse to precess once around the Earth wrt to the stars.
Lunar Anomalistic Cycle = 8.8502 sidereal years
157 x FMC = 176.999 Sidereal years
20 x LAC = 177.004 Sidereal years
and 157 FMC = 177.006 tropical years
Now the phase cycle of the Moon takes 4 x 177 years = 708 years to realign with the 177-year cycle.
Sidereal Years___Off by what fraction of a Synodic Cycle?
177_______________0.2681 =
354_______________0.5362 =
531_______________0.8043 =
708_______________0.0724 = 2.138 days
885_______________0.3405 =
1062______________0.6806 =
1239______________0.8767 =
1416______________0.1448 = 4.277 days
and 2 x 708 years = 1416 years.
These calculations are only very approximate and would have to be checked with a lunar ephemeris before any definitive claims can be made.
Which all goes to show just how little we know about past “climates” and the weather they produced.
It also puts our own tiny slice of “knowledge” of current climate and the weather that it is producing into perspective.
Formulating global policies that will necessitate changing all aspects of society based on what can be described at best as scientific ignorance and at worst on flawed data that constantly needs to be retrospectively adjusted is downright dangerous.
North Stradbroke Island is (roughly) east of Brisbane and runs (roughly) parallel to the coast, more or less forming the pacific ocean side of Moreton Bay.