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Late-Holocene Solar Variability and Its Impact on Climate in Korea

Paper Reviewed
Chae, I. and Park, J. 2016. Climate change and human activities over the past millennium at Mt. Jeombong, central-eastern Korea. Geosciences Journal 20: 477-484.

In this study of the past thousand years of the climate of central-eastern South Korea, Chae and Park (2016) developed a multi-proxy record of pollen, microscopic charcoal and carbon-isotopic composition (&13C), which they obtained from two 75-cm-long sediment cores they recovered from Mt. Jeombong swamps and analyzed them for composition, organic content and particle size. And what did these efforts reveal?

The two Korean researchers report that the Jeombong pollen records demonstrate the existence of both the warm Medieval Climate Anomaly and the much colder Little Ice Age, which they make a point of noting "are two well-known centennial climate shifts that were primarily caused by solar variability." And they further note in this regard that their data clearly demonstrate the occurrence of still other changes in solar activity, i.e. the Oort, Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton solar minimums, which all led to cooler times for Korea, as well as much of the rest of the world.

Posted 14 December 2016