关键词: 小冰期, 热带, 中国

Abstract: According to the historical data, climate was probables warm during the Medieval Period, the Yuan Dynasty and former part of the Ming Dynasty in China’s tropical zone. Based on the historical records about cold winter with snowfall, frost or freeze occurring in the tropical zone from 1245 to 1915, it has been found out that the Little Ice Age began in 1485 and ended in 1897. The records about historical weather are divided into three groups according to the locations of cold winter occurring in the subtropical, northern tropical and central tropical. Except the first which is not located at tropical, the second and the third kinds are called cool year and cold year, respectivily. As a result, it has been found out that there were three cold periods, i.e. the first （Ⅰ, 1485 1527）, the second （Ⅱ, 1606 1767） and the third （Ⅲ, 1835 1897） while two cool periods intercalated in the cold ones. The dating of the cold periods was later than that of north China. The frequency of cold winter got higher and higher from period Ⅰto period Ⅲ, but the amplitude of drop in annual mean temperature was <0 6℃ than present all of the three periods. However the maximum of low temperature reached -1 0℃ resulting in the removal of the south limit of snowfall southward by 2～3℃ latitudes or 1 0～1 5℃ of drop in temperature. Some natural disasters including flood, drought, typhoon and earthquke were frequent in the Little Ice Age especially the drought disasters which shows a desiccation trend of climatic change. The impacts of climate in the Little Ice Age on the poor agricultural harvest, ecological degeneration, migration of population, famine and society turbulence are also discussed in this paper.

Key words: Little Ice Age, Tropical zone, China