Harada et al. (2012a), in their preface to a special issue of Deep-Sea Research II, briefly highlight what the issue has to say about “the causal relationships connecting atmospheric circulation, the sea surface environment, the intermediate-deep ocean circulation and the carbon cycle,” a good understanding of which, in their words, “is crucial to clarifying the interactions and feedback mechanisms between the global climate system and the physics and climatology of the western North Pacific and its adjacent seas.”
And in so doing, they touch on several contributions that clearly reveal thenormality of the millennial-scale cycling of climate that has alternately brought the Earth into and out of the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Current Warm Period.
