A study of Redwood trees in California reveals that the Little
Ice Age affected California, too: 'In addition to painstaking
measurements of every branch and twig, the team took 15 half-
centimeter-wide core samples of The President to determine its
growth rate, which they learned was stunted in the abnormally
cold year of 1580 when temperatures in the Sierra hovered near
freezing even in the summer and the trees remained dormant."2005
article on the Little Ice Age: "Global temperatures naturally
fluctuate slightly from year to year. However, in the past
10,000 years, there have been three relatively long global cold
spells. The Little Ice Age (LIA) is the most recent and best
documented, especially in Europe. It may have had a greater
effect on history than its predecessors because it immediately
followed several centuries of unusually warm temperatures.
Between 800 and 1200, Europe basked in a warm spell known as the
"Medieval Warm Period" (MWP); temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees
Celsius higher than they are