Discovering the anomalously cold Mediterranean winters during the Maunder minimum

Abstract

This work presents an attempt to reconstruct the Mediterranean Italy climate across one of the coldest interval (ad 1645–1715) of the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), characterized by a prolonged episode of low solar acitivty known as ‘Maunder minimum’ (MM). LIA was characterized by marked climatic variability over this part of southern Europe, particularly during the MM. Using a model based on adding subregional details to regional-scale reconstruction, we estimated for this period a mean winter temperature of ~1°C lower than in the baseline period 1961–1990 (~8°C), and the anomaly further lowered down to about −4°C in the winter of 1683–1684. In addition, the interannual variability of extreme low temperatures makes the MM an outstanding climatic period. There is also some consistency of the empirical evidence with the modelling results that, for high-resolution wintertime seasonal reconstruction, central Mediterranean Sub-regional Area shows a colder climate than that represented by coarser simulation of European temperatures during the LIA period.