European climate drought – Happened 482 years ago – What effect did that have?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h / t JoNova, Patty Janson; A brutal super-drought in Europe in 1540, during little ice ageprovides context for efforts to link the current heatwave in Europe to global warming.

Europe’s biggest natural disaster

mirror online, by Axel Bojanowski
Updated on 15/07/2014

Eleven months with almost no rain and extreme heat: More than 300 chronicles from across Europe reveal gruesome details of a colossal disaster in 1540. And they show what disaster could be. once again.

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The year 1539 ended with a mild westerly storm. In December, it rained a lot, people fled. They don’t know how soon rainfall becomes valuable.

Unprecedented drought

In January 1540, a dry period began, the likes of which Central Europe has never experienced in living memory.according to scientists, who were able to collect a huge archive of weather data. For eleven months, there is hardly any rainfallThe researchers speak of a “major drought”.

The international team led by Oliver Wetter from the University of Bern wrote in the journal “Climate Change”.

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Walking across the Rhine

By the summer of 1540, people were increasingly looking for drinking water. Even one and a half meters below some riverbeds in Switzerland, “not a single drop” has been found, as the chronicler Hans Salat noted. Wells and springs that had never dried up before were abandoned. Others are heavily guarded and served only when the bell rings. Polluted water causes thousands of deaths from dysentery and colitis.

Lake Constance’s level dropped so low that The island of Lindau was connected to the mainland in the summer of 1540, otherwise only in winter, when precipitation collects like snow in the mountains and flows slowly into the lake. “The lake is too small,” the chroniclers wondered.

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Further reading (in German): https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/klimawandel/id_70084656/hitze-jahr-1540-europas-groesste-naturkatosystemhe-.html

Article by Oliver Wetter;

An underrated record-breaking event – why the summer of 1540 could have been warmer than 2003

O. Wetter 1,2 and C. Pfister1 1 Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland 2 History Institute, Department of Economic, Social and Environmental History (WSU), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Letters to: O. Wetter ([email protected]) and C. Pfister ([email protected])

Received: June 13, 2012 – Published on Clim.
Discussion in the past: July 20, 2012
Edit: December 11, 2012 – Accepted: December 12, 2012 – Published: January 14, 2013

abstract. The heat of the summer of 2003 in Western and Central Europe is believed to be unprecedented since the Middle Ages based on grape harvest data (GHD) and late wood maximum density (MXD) data from trees. on the Alps. This article points out that the authors of these studies overlooked the fact that the heat and drought in Switzerland in 1540 could exceed the amplitude of the previous hottest summer of 2003, because the Persistent and unusual rainfall in that year, are described rigorously and rigorously. body of documentary evidence, severely affecting the reliability of GHD and tree rings as a proxy for temperature estimates. Abnormal spring-summer (AMJJ) temperatures of 4.7 C to 6.8 C significantly higher than 2003 have been evaluated for 1540 from a new long series of Swiss GHDs (1444 to 2011). During the peak heat wave in early August, grapes withered on the vine, causing many growers to interrupt or delay harvest even though the grapes were fully ripe until after the next rain. Likewise, the leaves of many trees wither and fall to the ground under extreme drought pressure as often happens in late autumn. It remains to be determined by further study whether this result obtained from local analyzes can be extrapolated spatially. Based on temperature estimates for Switzerland, it is assumed from a large body of consistent qualitative documentary evidence for the 1540 heat drought that AMJJ temperatures in the vicinity of West and Central Europe could be more extreme than it was in 2003. Considering the importance of soil moisture deficits to record heat waves, these results still need to be confirmed with estimated seasonal rainfall. It was concluded that biological proxy data may not accurately reveal record-breaking heat and drought events. Such assessments therefore need to be supplemented with a critical study of contemporary evidence from sources that provide detailed and rigorous data on extreme weather events and their associated impacts. human, ecological and social systems.

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Further reading (requires email registration): https://www.academia.edu/26112640/Climate_of_the_Past

Not just 1540 – there is evidence of a nine-year dry period, which led to a drought in 1540.

Central Europe, 1531–1540 C.E.: Dryest summer decade in 5 centuries?

Rudolf Brázdil 1,2, Petr Dobrovolný 1,2, Martin Bauch 3, Chantal Camenisch 4.5, Andrea Kiss 6,7, 5 Oldřich Kotyza 8, Piotr Oliński 9, Ladislava Řezníčková 1,2

1 Institute of Geography, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
2 Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic
3 Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig, Germany
10 4 Oeschger Climate Change Research Center, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland 5 History Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
6 Institute of Irrigation Engineering and Water Resources Management, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
7 Auxiliary History Department, Institute of History, University of Szeged, 15 Hungary
8 Regional Museum, Litoměřice, Czech Republic
9 Institute of Historical and Archives Sciences, University of Toruń, Poland

Correspondence to: Rudolf Brázdil ([email protected]) 20

Abstract. Based on three drought indices (SPI, SPEI, Z-index) reconstructed from documentary evidence and instrumental records, the summer of 1531–1540 was identified as the driest summer decade of the period. section 1501–2015 in the Czech Land. Based on literature data, extended from the Czech to central European scale, the arid models with various intensities (e.g., represented by dry spells, low number of rainy days, very low rivers and depleted water resources) occurring in 1532, 1534–1536, 1538 and especially 1540, broken by wetter or normal patterns usually in 1531, 1533, 1537 and 1539. Summer drought-related information extracted from central Europe was confirmed in total summer rainfall from a multi-proxy reconstruction for Europe by Pauling et al. (2006) and further by reconstructing the self-corrected summer PDSI from the tree ring widths in OWDA by Cook et al. (2015). The described summer models fit the distribution of sea level pressure deviations from the modern reference period. Drought in summer causes many negative effects, such as crop failure, reduction and lack of water resources, frequent forest fires, while in the wetter summer, central Europe is affected by floods. overwhelm. However, there is no indication of the severe impact of the multi-country or multi-year impact. Reconstructions based on documentary data indicate that the summer of 1531–1540 constituted the driest decade of summers in Central Europe over the past five centuries, from 1501 to 2010 C.E.

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Read more: https://cp.copernicus.org/preprints/cp-2020-92/cp-2020-92.pdf

The problem is, even if you believe global warming is making droughts more frequent, there’s no way to prevent severe droughts from happening altogether. If a super-drought is possible during the middle of the little ice age, there is no reasonable global temperature that can completely prevent such events.

Europeans must prepare for severe droughts, regardless of global CO2 levels or climate change.

Thankfully today, unlike our ancestors, we have the technical ability to create large reservoirs to help us weather such events.

We even have an inexpensive method to protect our water reservoirs from excessive evaporation, thanks to an innovation developed in California.

Perhaps next time European leaders will be better prepared.