In recent decades the term Little Ice Age has come to mean the one or more epochs of relative cooling that occurred during the latest millennium. Lamb (1972, 1977, 1984) recognized a regionally varied but general deterioration from about A.D. 1550 to 1850, but more specifically this deterioration often is taken as occurring around 1580 to 1700.
In its broader sense, the Little Ice Age often is thought to have occurred from about A.D. 1250 to 1850. However, some writers would like to abandon the term altogether. Most writers now take the Little Ice Age(s) to mean the general cooling trend that followed and contrasted with the Little Climatic Optimum or Medieval Warmingof the Viking-Norman times, i.e., around A.D. 900 to 1300, when mean temperatures in the midlatitudes generally were at least 1°C higher than today, and mean sea level was up to about 0.5 m higher; in the high latitudes, the mean temperatures were up to 5°C higher, which permitted the Viking colonization...
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Fairbridge, R.W. (1987). Little ice age . In: Climatology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30749-4_108
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