Did European colonists cause the European Ice Age?
Scientists from University College London have argued that the decimation of Indigenous populations by diseases brought by European settlers could have caused the ‘Little European Ice Age’ – a widespread cooling period that lasted from roughly 1300 to 1850.
These diseases wiped out up to 90% of the pre-Columbian population – or about 56 million people.
This research suggests that the massive population decline led to large areas of abandoned agricultural land that were reclaimed by trees and other vegetation.
The regrowth of these landscapes absorbed so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas levels, that it eventually chilled the planet. The drop in CO₂ around the time of the colonisation of the Americas has been proven by air bubbles in ice core records from Antarctica.
This climatic shift significantly impacted European history, as harsher and colder winters led to an increase in crop failures, famines, and pandemics across Europe.
This contributed to a peasant and urban poor population that became more and more dissatisfied with their despotic rulers.
Just a theory?
However, the effect of colonisation is just one theory amongst many – and critics have pointed out to the fact that the cooling started before European colonisation.
One study also concludes that the reforestation attributed to the death of the Indigenous American population is overrated.
Another research suggests that paradoxically, a warmer period and warmer Atlantic ocean coming into the Nordic Seas led to the breakup of blocks of sea ice and glaciers that then changed the atmospheric pressure over the Atlantic Ocean – leading to Europe’s cooling.
While this other study suggests that the little-Ice Age was mainly triggered by volcanic eruptions and periods of decreased solar activity.
Whatever the final explanation may be, maybe this story will help us to be less dissatisfied with today’s European weather conditions.