Endless cold: a seasonal reconstruction of temperature and precipitation in the Burgundian Low Countries during the 15th century based on documentary evidence

Camenisch, Chantal

doi:10.5194/cpd-11-713-2015

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In this context, crop failures triggered, in part, by disastrous weather sent food prices soaring even higher and led to widespread regional famines that could not easily be relieved with emergency grain imports. Chronicles and manorial accounts suggest that epidemic and epizootic diseases spread amid cold, wet weather in the 1430s, although neither source sheds light on the pathogens behind these diseases (Brázdil & Kotyza, ; Camenisch, ; Camenisch et al, , p. 2116).…”

Section: Crisis and Conflict In The Early Liamentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries

Degroot

2018

WIREs Climate Change

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Scholars in many disciplines have used diverse methods and sources to establish that, between the 15th and 18th centuries, a “Little Ice Age” considerably cooled Earth's climate. In four particularly chilly periods—the Spörer Minimum, Grindelwald Fluctuation, Maunder Minimum, and Dalton Minimum—falling temperatures both caused and reflected changes in atmospheric circulation that altered regional patterns of precipitation. Many scholars have argued that weather in these cold periods provoked or worsened regional food shortages, famines, rebellions, wars, and outbreaks of epidemic disease, in ways that may have contributed to mass mortality across the early modern world. More recently, some scholars have contrasted the fates of societies or communities that were “vulnerable” to climate change with those that were “resilient” or even consciously or unconsciously adaptive in the face of the Little Ice Age. Overall, research that connects climatic and social histories has suggested that human decisions, political structures, economic arrangements, institutions, and cultures either magnified or mitigated the impact of climate change on the societies of the early modern world. This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Major Historical Eras

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Section: Crisis and Conflict In The Early Liamentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries

Degroot

2018

WIREs Climate Change

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“…Camenisch, ‘Endless cold’. For the 1430s in a broader European perspective, see Camenisch et al., ‘1430s’.…”

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confidence: 99%

The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Roosen

Curtis

2018

The Economic History Review

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Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a 'light touch' of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories-including the countryside. The previous conception of a 'light touch' of plague in the Low Countries was created by the overprivileging of particular urban sources, and a failure to account for the rapid replenishment of cities via inward migration, which obscured demographic decimation. We suggest that the population of the Low Countries may not have recovered faster than other parts of western Europe but instead experienced a greater degree of post-plague rural-urban migration.

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“…For instance, Glaser (2013) followedPfister's indexing approach but used a three-point scale for the period 1000-1500 as information on weather appear only occasionally in documentary sources from this time. Schwarz-Zanetti (1998), Litzenburger (2015) and Camenisch (2015a) have also applied seven-point indices for the late Middle Ages, the latter two series at a seasonal resolution ( Figure 2). (Litzenburger, 2015) and the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands; Camenisch, 2015a) for the period 1420-1500, reconstructed using the Pfister index approach.…”

Section: Temperature Indicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate indices in historical climate reconstructions: A global state-of-the-art

Nash¹,

Adamson²,

Ashcroft³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Evidence contained within historical documents and inscriptions provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. A common approach used by historical climatologists to convert such qualitative documentary evidence into continuous quantitative proxy data is through the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. There is, however, considerable variability in the types of phenomena reconstructed using an index approach and the practice of index development in different parts of the world. This review, written by members of the PAGES CRIAS Working Group – a collective of climate historians and historical climatologists researching Climate Reconstructions and Impacts from the Archives of Societies – provides the first global synthesis of the use of the index approach in climate reconstruction. We begin by summarising the range of studies that have used indices for climate reconstruction across six continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia) plus the world's oceans. We then outline the different methods by which indices are developed in each of these regions, including a discussion of the processes adopted to verify and calibrate index series, and the measures used to express confidence and uncertainty. We conclude with a series of recommendations to guide the development of future index-based climate reconstructions to maximise their effectiveness for use by climate modellers and in multiproxy climate reconstructions.

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Endless cold: a seasonal reconstruction of temperature and precipitation in the Burgundian Low Countries during the 15th century based on documentary evidence

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries

Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries

The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Climate indices in historical climate reconstructions: A global state-of-the-art

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