Rising Sea-Levels May Have Forced Vikings to Leave Greenland, Shows Study
By Ashmita Gupta17 January, 2022TWC India
What could have possibly driven out the mighty Vikings?
There are, of course, several theories attached to their perplexing disappearance, but the most conceivable hypothesis is climate change. New findings point to ice sheet growth and sea-level rise as the causative agents of massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately led them to desert the region.
“The literature suggests that Viking out-migration was forced by the climatic shift from the Medieval Warm Period (~900-1350 AD) to the Little Ice Age (~1350-1850 AD) when environmental conditions became unfavourable for continued settlement,” reads the abstract of the presentation at AGU.
By sheer luck, when the Vikings first arrived in Greenland in the 10th century, the region was experiencing a warmer climate which allowed agriculture to flourish. And the group continued to enjoy this warmer climate for the next 500 years.
However, between the 14th and 19th centuries, Greenland experienced what is known as the "Little Ice Age".
https://weather.com/en-IN/india/science/news/2022-01-17-rising-sea-levels-may-have-forced-vikings-to-leave-greenland
On this date 51 years ago, climate scientists predicted a new ice age was coming
1692: Mini ice age instigates the Salem Witch Trials
The famous Salem Witch Trials between 1692 and 1693 ultimately resulted in more than 200 people being accused of practicing witchcraft and 20 people being put to death. Causes for the hysteria have been attributed to everything from socioeconomic issues in Salem to cold weather, which does overlap with periods of witch hunts throughout history.
1876: Famines form the 'Third World'
The term “Third World” was created during the Cold War to refer to development gaps across the globe due to income disparities and access. Many of these differences were most acutely shaped in the last quarter of the 1800s, particularly in 1876 when famines caused by El Niño drought brought utter destruction to crops in India's Deccan Plateau, across China, and in Brazil, Ethiopia, and other parts of the world.
1945: Kokura gets spared—twice
Sunshine over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, meant the skies were clear for the first nuclear weapon ever to be used in war to be dropped from overhead, killing 146,000 people over the course of the next four months and sparing Hiroshima's back-up target of Kokura.
Kokura dodged tragedy again just days later, when the second nuclear weapon was already loaded in a B-29 destined for the town but not dropped because of overcast skies, drifting smoke, and obscured visibility from coal tar being intentionally burned by the Yahata Steel Works. Low on fuel after several passes over the town, the bomb ended up being dropped over the backup city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9., where upwards of 80,000 people were killed.
1948: Air inversion in Donora, Pennsylvania
The Clean Air Act—among the most comprehensive air-quality bills throughout the world—was passed in 1963, following the 1955 signing of the Air Pollution Control Act. But the beginnings of such legislation came from Donora, Pennsylvania, where an “air inversion” in 1948 goes down in history as one of the worst air pollution disasters in the United States. It caused breathing issues for more than 40% of the 14,000-person population in the mill town.
Donora was home to U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works and American Steel & Wire plant, which together released high emissions of sulfur dioxide, fluorine, nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and other toxic gases into the air. On Oct. 27, 1948, that air got trapped by an inversion of warmer air containing the airborne toxins in cold air across the valley town. The fog quickly became a yellow smog that stayed heavy in the air for five days until heavy rains came and broke the spell.
All told, 20 Donorans died by November—and another 50 died from respiratory illnesses a month later. The deaths directly resulted in new pushes for clean air laws in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States.
