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Posted on 07/10/2009 3:13:33 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Bad weather may have triggered the fall of the Roman Empire. When the Visigoths and other northern barbarians upped sticks and headed south into Roman territory in the 5th century it might have been to escape the cold and poor harvests.
Waning sunspot activity is a symptom of a weakened Sun, which could make the world cool by around half a degree. Meteorologist Kevin Pang found that sunspots were conspicuously absent from the historical record. "That was just about the time the Roman Empire fell in 476," he says. The gaps in sunspot sightings coincided with high levels of carbon-14 in tree rings -- another indicator of fainter solar activity -- he told the American Geophysical Union last week.
Pang thinks the resulting change in climate could have indirectly caused the end of the Romans' dominance in Europe. "In the northern latitudes, a half a degree of cooling can shorten the growing season just enough to make crops fail," he says. That might have sent the barbarians south into the Roman Empire.
And it might have been even colder according to another study published earlier this month (Science, vol 294, p 2149). Researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland developed a computer model of the effects of a weakened Sun, and found that while global temperatures would only drop by half a degree, regional cooling would be greater -- perhaps by two degrees in Europe during the winter.
Earth scientist Michael Rampino of New York University says the idea is plausible. "If the climate is changing, it's certainly enough to affect what is going on in the world of cultures at the same time."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
William the Conqueror's Global WarmingLloyd Keigwin, a researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution... concluded that although sea surface temperature (SST) in the northern Saragasso Sea is now about 1 degree centigrade warmer than 400 years ago during the Little Ice Age, it is about 1 degree cooler than about 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. Keigwin's conclusions are based on his study of sediment accumulation in the Saragasso Sea... Eleventh century society burned no gasoline. There were no electric power plants to burn coal. No chemical plants emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Airplanes, reputed to emit as much of the greenhouse gases as the eighth most polluting nation, were still 900 years away from being invented.
by Steven J. Milloy
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Could have adapted to the weather if they hadn’t all gone nuts from the led poisoning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_adrianople
The Battle of Adrianople that led to a barbarian kingdom in the middle of the empire happened a century before 476...
Been a long time since they rocked and rolled. Been a long, lonely lonely lonely long lonely time.
:’) The cold started even earlier.
NO....it was all that asbestos they used to line the outside of their hypocausts!
Great read.
Does anyone know the method of observing sunspots in Roman times? How and where were they recorded?
Fascinating! Thanks! (Terrific race, the Romans)
The last slave revolt of any great consequence was the famous Spartacus’s during the Roman Republic. There was never a major slave revolt under the Emperors. By the later Empire there was a major shortage of slaves to grow food, because slaves generally came from conquered non Romans. Once Rome ceased to conquer new territory it ceased to get new slaves. Tilling the soil was something that free Romans would not do, because agricultural income assumed that it was essentially unpaid.
In many ways the ‘Little Ice Age’ of the late middle ages was similar to the cold period during the late Classical period and the early middle ages. The weather got colder, crops failed, and a terrible plague wiped out much of the population. Perhaps the difference in outcomes was due to the adaptation of new labor saving technology in the West, something that the Romans, with their slave economy, never tried.
I believe the records used to study it today were collected in China.
Thanks!
But how were they observed? I remember more years ago than I like to admit my grade school class was allowed to look at a solar eclipse through smoke-blackened glass, which is probably verboten today. We later used exposed blank film negatives. I was just wondering how reliable solar observation techniques were at that time. I know the Chinese kept scrupulous astronomical records but how accurate would sunspot counts be?
No person and no nation lives forever!
Pretty sure they used the camera obscura method (under a different name, probably a bit different design).
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