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New research about medieval weather conditions has revealed that a severe drought that struck Europe in the early 14th-century displays similarities with the 2018 weather anomaly, which also left the continent experiencing exceptional heat and drought.
The event also marked the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age and would lead into a wet and cold phase of the 1310s and the resulting Great Famine of 1315–21. Advertisement
Researchers from the Leibniz Institutes for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) explain that medieval and recent weather patterns resemble the stable weather patterns that have occurred more frequently since the 1980s due to the increased warming of the Arctic. According to the Leibniz researchers’ hypothesis based on their comparison of the 1302–07 and 2018 droughts, transitional phases in the climate are always characterized by periods of low variability, i
Studying written records preserved from the 14
th century, they found that Central Europe had been plagued by fires and reduced crop yields , as agriculture depended on enormous amounts of water during that time. Seen together, these conditions would be consistent with the onset of long-term drought. Further GWZO research confirmed that drought conditions were experienced in much of the Middle East during the same 14th-century period, indicating the global nature of the phenomenon.
“We want to show that historical climate change can be reconstructed much better if written historical sources are incorporated alongside climate archives like tree rings or sediment cores,” explained Dr. Martin Bauch, who led the GWZO team of researchers who participated in the new study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal
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The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age was apparently accompanied by severe droughts between 1302 and 1307 in Europe; this preceded the wet and cold phase of the 1310s and the resulting great famine of 1315–21.
The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age was apparently accompanied by severe droughts between 1302 and 1307 in Europe; this preceded the wet and cold phase of the 1310s and the resulting great famine of 1315–21. In the journal Climate of the Past, researchers from the Leibniz Institutes for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) write that the 1302–07 weather patterns display similarities to the 2018 weather anomaly, in which continental Europe experienced exceptional heat and drought. Both the medieval and recent weather patterns resemble the stable weather patterns that have occurred more frequently since the 1980s due to the increased warming of the Arcti