Roman Warm

Period

The Roman Warm Period, or Roman Climatic Optimum, was a period of unusually-warm weather
in Europe and the North Atlantic that ran from approximately 250 BC to AD 400.[1] Theophrastus
(371 – c. 287 BC) wrote that date trees could grow in Greece if they were planted but that they
could not set fruit there. That is still the case today, which implies that South Aegean mean
summer temperatures in the 4th and the 5th centuries BC were within a degree of modern ones.
That and other literary fragments from the time confirm that the Greek climate was basically the
same then as around 2000. Tree rings from the Italian Peninsula in the late 3rd century BC
indicate a time of mild conditions there around the time of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with
imported elephants in 218 BC.[2]
 Roman Warm Period

The Roman Warm Period affected Europe and the North Atlantic Ocean.

Duration 250 BC – AD 400

Location Europe and the North Atlantic

Dendrochronological evidence from wood found at the Parthenon shows variability of climate in
the 5th century BC, which resembles the modern pattern of variation.[3]

Cooling at the end of the period is noted in Southwest Florida, which may have been caused by a
reduction in solar radiation reaching the Earth. That may have triggered a change in atmospheric
circulation patterns.[4]

The phrase "Roman Warm Period" first appears in a 1995 doctoral thesis.[5] It was popularized by
an article published in Nature in 1999.[6]

More recent research, including a 2019 analysis based on a much larger dataset of climate
proxies, has found that the putative period, along with other warmer or colder pre-industrial
periods such as the "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period," were regional phenomena, not
globally-coherent episodes.[7] That analysis uses the temperature record of the last 2,000 years
dataset compiled by the PAGES 2k Consortium 2017.[7]

Proxies

See also
Notes

References

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Last edited 16 days ago by Florian Blaschke