Big Rise In Sea Levels During Roman Times
February 24, 2016
tags: Lamb, migration, Sea Level
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ben Vorlich
The Roman Warm Period marked an era of widespread climatic changes, of which one was sea level rise.
HH Lamb records the effect this had on migration, in Climate History & The Modern World:
Note the displacement of population from the coasts of the Flanders and Netherlands, as sea levels rose. This would surely have required more than just a few mm of rise.
Lamb talks of a meter of rise up to 400 AD, over the “warmer centuries in Roman times”, but this certainly was not a steady, consistent increase, as he records the recession around 200 AD.
It is difficult to detect any evidence that sea level rise in the last century has been any greater than some of those Roman times.
It is also worth noting what Lamb says about the migration of barbarian tribes from Central Asia, which set off a chain reaction of migrations, partly responsible for the Anglo Saxon ones.
It is a reminder that the climate was far from stable in the past, as often portrayed. Remember, as well, that the period of drought referred to coincides with a cooler global climate.
notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com
Don B permalink
February 24, 2016 11:38 am
Climate, History and the Modern World, second edition, paperback, page 115:
“Of course, the details are less certain than the overall trend, but there is considerable agreement that the most rapid phases [of sea level rise] were between about 8000 and 5000 BC, also that the rise of general water level was effectively over by about 2000 BC, when it may have stood a metre or two higher than today.”
The idea that the highest sea level was about 2,000 BC is consistent with what Lamb wrote about glaciers:
“It was after 2000-1500 BC that most of the present glaciers in the Rocky Mountains south of 57 o N were formed and that major re-advance of those in the Alaskan Rockies first took place.
“And at their subsequent advanced positions – probably around 500 BC as well as between 1650 and 1850 AD – the glaciers in the Alps regained an extent, estimated in the Glockner region, at about 5 times their Bronze Age Minimum, when all the smaller ones had disappeared.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/hh-lambs-climate-history-the-modern-world-in-review-pert/ |
