The "Madhouse Century" Concept is based on geological findings that indict that just before the start of the last Ice Age, 120,000 years ago, you had a massive expansion of sea level of about 20 feet followed less then a century later by a 30 foot DROP in Sea levels, as the Ice Age Kicked in.
http://www.imaja.com/as/environment/can/journal/madhousecentury.html
In the August 1995 Scientific American, Christina Stock reported how "for a geologic nanosecond-a century, in other words-some 120,000 years ago, the earth underwent climatic havoc." New findings show that sea level records, imprinted in limestone of the Bahama Islands, rose 20 feet above that of today and then plunged to at least 30 feet below modern levels. These erratic 100 years came at the close of the last interglacial era, a time when the climate was somewhat similar to ours.
In effect what is believed to have happened was the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapsed. This lead to the Southern Ocean current cutting through the then open water of what is today West Antarctica (The Antarctic peninsula had become an island). This also released a huge amount of trace elements into the Southern Pacific and Indian Oceans. Today those oceans are "Deserts" in the sense no Algae grow there. The area has sufficient sunlight, but all of the trace elements needed for life and either absorbed by other Algae closer to the Continents, or kept away by the strong Antarctic Current that surrounds Antarctica (The Atlantic Ocean seems to be exempt from this, but in the middle of the Atlantic is a ridge of volcano activity that is probably providing the trace elements to the Atlantic Ocean). Iron seems to be the key missing element but it is NOT the only one. This is based on experiments where Iron was added to waters in the above desert and the Algae then bloomed till the Iron was removed.
Thus a change in current flows and any increase of trace elements into the Southern Ocean can lead to a huge increase in sea levels, followed by an even larger DECREASE in Sea levels (Through any such decrease will have to work around the massive increase in carbon we are putting into the atmosphere).
One expert even states that the cold winters of 1939 to 1946 (the coldest winters since the 1820s) can be contributed to the expansion of war activities in the North Sea starting on September 1, 1939. This increase in laying of mines, and sinking of ships churned up the waters in the North Sea to such a degree, it brought cold temperatures to Europe from 1939 till 1947.
https://books.google.com/books?id=0jzs_YndQecC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=Cold+winter+WWII+Atlantic+ocean&source=bl&ots=rFozDxz0FX&sig=nKLGBqYh7HGkESlHVwA6oA_s-No&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2nNOF9NvKAhUEeT4KHQlFBCM4FBDoAQgxMAQ#v=onepage&q=Cold%20winter%20WWII%20Atlantic%20ocean&f=false
I bring that book up for it indicates that even a low level of increase items dropped into the sea (Mines, and sunk ships) appears to have been enough to increase the cold weather in Europe. The key is changes in the oceans, any change in the oceans have a huge affect on weather on land. The actual relationship is relatively unknown but can be huge, if the increase in naval activities in the North Sea and the Baltic (and the huge increase in sinking of U-Boats in the mid Atlantic starting in 1943) affected winters in Europe from 1939 till 1947.
Side note: 1939 also marked the end of the Dust Bowl, as the huge High Pressure system over the Great plains finally broke up. This happened BEFORE WWII started, thus it is possible the winters of 1939 till 1947 was the result of the breakup of that High Pressure System. On the other hand the author mentioned the increase activities of Japan in China after 1937 and that activity may have been enough to change world wide weather patterns to break up the High Pressure system over the US. The Japanese movement into China in 1937 till 1940 was extensive and brutal, not only on people but the land they worked on (most Chinese of that time period were peasants).
On the other hand, you had a massive increase in shelling from Naval vessels, both in training and actual combat, of shells that landed in the sea and when they missed their targets sunk deep in the ocean depths. Planes of WWII were even less accurate and thus they dropped more bombs, with more misses, just to hit a ship with SOME of their bombs (The Inaccuracy of bombing was the main reason the German Air Force, the US Navy and the Japanese Navy all retained Dive Bombers till the end of WWII, Dive Bombers were more accurate then conventional bombers and well they could NOT hold as many bombs as the larger bombers, Dive Bomber had so much more accuracy that Dove Bombers did more EFFECTIVE damage then conventional bombers when it came to ships and true military targets).
Thus, the increase shelling and bombs being dropped in both the Baltic Sea (By Germans forces against Poland and later Russian Forces against Finland) along with increase shelling and mine laying in the North sea (and the loss of actual merchant ships in both seas do to hostile action) MAY be the best explanation for the harsh winter of 1939 to 1940. The German move against Denmark and Norway in March 1940 appears to be to late, but that invasion only occurred do to massive preparations in the North Sea from September 1939 onward to those invasions were seen as a flank attack to divert resources from Britain and France. Thus while the actual attack on Norway and Denmark would have had no effect, the preparations for such an attack would have.
Second Side note: The second most accurate method of air attack during WWII was direct attack with Rockets or guns. This was the preferred method of attack by the Russian Air Forces and became more and more common with the US and British Air Forces as the war progressed and the ineffectiveness of Medium and heavy bombers in support of actual fighting on the ground became clear.
Heavy bombers were best at hitting large targets, i.e. cities, they were not even that good at hitting actual military targets, such as bridges and pill boxes, most of the bombs dropped by such medium and heavy bombers would miss the target and any confusion caused by the large dropping of bomb was offset by the need to keep ground troops to far away to exploit any such confusion (The reason the ground troops had to be so far away was the good possibilities that the bombers of the time period would miss the target and hit the troops, thus ground troops preferred Dive Bombers or Direct attack planes as air support not bombers.
Today, you have a lot of direct support planes, supporting troops with direct fire but no true bombers in direct support of ground troops. Dive bombers disappeared at the end of WWII for while accurate, the stress caused by dive bombing meant the planes had to be kept small and that reduced their speeds below what is needed to survive in modern combat. Efforts to make larger and faster Dive Bombers all failed during WWII do to the problems of stress caused by dive bombing, stress that could be handle by the Dive bombers of the Stuka and Douglas Dive Bomber size, but stresses that could not be solved once larger engines and larger planes to carry such engines were needed (The reinforcements needed on such large bodies made them to heavy). Thus Dive Bombing as a concept was dropped after 1945 replaced by Rockets, guns and missiles. On the other hand, till the development of missiles, dive bombing was the most accurate way to drop a bomb on a target, Missiles do to being able to change directions as it heads for its target can exceed the accuracy of Dive Bombers.
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