Evidence for the Climate During the Late Maunder Minimum from Proxy Data and Model Simulations Available Within KIHZ

Summary

The knowledge constructed within the project “Klima in historischen Zeiten” (KIHZ) about the Late Maunder Minimum (LMM), based upon corals, lake and marine sediment records, ice cores and speleothems, is reviewed. The data are compared to a simulation with the climate model ECHO-G. It is found that the LMM was an event of global scale, with a cooling on the entire Northern hemisphere and in the tropics, while a weaker warming may have taken place on the Southern Hemisphere. The model results are mostly consistent with the empirical evidence. However, the empirical data are not very conclusive so that any claims that the dynamics behind the simulated LMM would equal the dynamics of the real event should be considered with care.