Droughts in Historical Times in Europe, as Derived from Documentary Evidence

Brázdil, Rudolf; Kiss, Andrea; Řezníčková, Ladislava; Barriendos, Mariano

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-23315-0_4

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Human interventions may mitigate and/or exacerbate the impacts of drought downstream through hydrological system management and engineering (He et al, 2017). The socio-political and cultural circumstances during each recorded drought will represent an important underpinning in considering long-term drought trends and variability and will be considered individually in each instance (see discussion by Brázdil et al, 2020).…”

Section: Drought Trend and Frequency Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Northeast China (CE 1200–2015)

Macdonald¹,

Sangster²,

Chiverrell³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. The occurrence of two severe droughts in Northeastern China since CE 2000 has raised attention in the risk presented by droughts. This paper presents a historic drought series for Shenyang in the Liaoning province, NE China since CE 1200 to present, with a reconstructed long precipitation series (1906–2015), augmented with historical documentary accounts. Analysis of the instrumental series using a standardised precipitation index (SPI) and extending it using historical records has produced a combined series spanning over eight centuries. The combined long series was analysed for patterns in drought frequency, severity and typology. Three droughts comparable to those since CE 2000 occur in the instrumental series during early twentieth century (e.g. 1907, 1916–18 and 1920–21), and coeval archival sources reveal the human impacts of these severe droughts. The archival sources demonstrate how reduced vulnerability resulting from societal and cultural changes in the early twentieth century helped prevent the loss of life experienced during comparable severe droughts at the end of the nineteenth century (1887 and 1891). Incorporating a longer temporal perspective to drought analysis shows that onset is often earlier than is documented explicitly within the archives, and so combined SPI series for a region could provide an early warning of drought development expressed as a water deficit in the previous year. Analysis of archival data provides a rich historical description of impacts and societal responses to severe drought. The archives provide a rich historical description of drought impacts and responses at the personal and community level, whilst also detailing the different roles played by communities, state and international organisations in responding to events.

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Section: Drought Trend and Frequency Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Northeast China (CE 1200–2015)

Macdonald¹,

Sangster²,

Chiverrell³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…In recent decades, scholars of medieval studies have produced considerable research reconstructing the Little Ice Age (LIA) (Pfister et al, 1996) and appraising the impacts of cold events on pre-modern societies; however, except for the notable exception of economic historians, few scholars have addressed the issue of droughts (Stone, 2014). Almost two decades ago, Brown (2001) has highlighted the so-called Dantean Anomaly as a wet and cold anomaly lasting from 1315 to 1321 that led to famine over northwestern Europe (Jordan, 1996). This climatic anomaly has been recently described more neutrally as "the 1310s event" (Slavin, 2018).…”

Section: Introduction and State Of The Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

A prequel to the Dantean Anomaly: the precipitation seesaw and droughts of 1302 to 1307 in Europe

et al. 2020

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Abstract. The cold/wet anomaly of the 1310s (“Dantean Anomaly”) has attracted a lot of attention from scholars, as it is commonly interpreted as a signal of the transition between the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). The huge variability that can be observed during this decade, like the high interannual variability observed in the 1340s, has been highlighted as a side effect of this rapid climatic transition. In this paper, we demonstrate that a multi-seasonal drought of almost 2 years occurred in the Mediterranean between 1302 and 1304, followed by a series of hot, dry summers north of the Alps from 1304 to 1306. We suggest that this outstanding dry anomaly, unique in the 13th and 14th centuries, together with cold anomalies of the 1310s and the 1340s, is part of the climatic shift from the MCA to the LIA. Our reconstruction of the predominant weather patterns of the first decade of the 14th century – based on both documentary and proxy data – identifies multiple European precipitation seesaw events between 1302 and 1307, with similarities to the seesaw conditions which prevailed over continental Europe in 2018. It can be debated to what extent the 1302–1307 period can be compared to what is currently discussed regarding the influence of the phenomenon of Arctic amplification on the increasing frequency of persistent stable weather patterns that have occurred since the late 1980s. Additionally, this paper deals with socioeconomic and cultural responses to drought risks in the Middle Ages as outlined in contemporary sources and provides evidence that there is a significant correlation between pronounced dry seasons and fires that devastated cities.

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“…The analysis of historical droughts is currently one of the most important topics of discussion in historical climatology and hydrology; European and global overviews have recently been published (see, e.g. Brázdil et al 2018Brázdil et al , 2019. As for historical Hungary and Slavonia, the available documentary evidence on medieval droughts has been recently presented by Kiss (2017Kiss ( , 2019a and Kiss and Nikolić (2015), while socioeconomic impacts of selected early modern drought events, such as the great droughts of 1717-1718 and 1863, have been studied on a local-regional level by Csáki (2010) and Boa (2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The great (1506–)1507 drought and its consequences in Hungary in a (Central) European context

Kiss

2020

Reg Environ Change

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Although in contemporary documentation 1506-1507 is the best-documented drought event in the medieval and sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Carpathian Basin, until now no investigations have been carried out on this subject. Based on contemporary sources-such as narratives, charters, official and private correspondence, estate, town, county and taxation accounts-a concise overview of the documented natural-physical characteristics, temporal-spatial distribution of the drought event and related weather extremes is provided. In a European context, the present investigation reveals that 1506 was a dry year not only in the Carpathian Basin but also in most of Europe. Drought continued in the Carpathian Basin and Italy in 1507, while opposing weather patterns developed in West-Central, Western and Northern Europe, showing similarities to the 2007 and 2015 summer heat and drought events. In the Carpathian Basin, the drought was characterized by the critical low water levels of the River Tisza, heat and high-intensity convective events. Major socioeconomic consequences were the higher occurrence rate of major urban fires, bad harvests (cereals, grapevine/wine, hay) and livestock problems (lack or loss of bee, bee products, sheep, cattle, fish, fur)-the latter ones might serve as indicators for future studies. The drought induced numerous individual and institutional responses, including various types of tax relief and common works. The ensuing plague epidemic reached a particularly high level in Hungary; the drought, bad harvests, a change to cooler and wetter conditions, and nutrition problems could have contributed to the intensification of the epidemic outbreak in 1508-1511.

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Droughts in Historical Times in Europe, as Derived from Documentary Evidence

Cited by 11 publications

References 91 publications

Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Northeast China (CE 1200–2015)

Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Northeast China (CE 1200–2015)

A prequel to the Dantean Anomaly: the precipitation seesaw and droughts of 1302 to 1307 in Europe

The great (1506–)1507 drought and its consequences in Hungary in a (Central) European context

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