The weather behind words – new methodologies for integrated hydrometeorological reconstruction through documentary sources

Abstract

Abstract. Historical climatology has remarkable potentialities to produce climatic reconstructions with high temporal resolution. However, some methodological limitations hinder the spatial development of this discipline. This study presents a new approach to historical climatology that overcomes some of the limitations of classical approaches, such as the rogation method or content analysis: the Cost Opportunity for Small Towns (COST). It analyses historic documents and takes advantage of all sorts of meteorological information available in written documents, and not only the severest events, to therefore overcome the most prominent bottlenecks of former approaches. COST relies on the fact that using paper is very costly, so its use to describe meteorological conditions is hypothesised as being proportional to the impact they had on society. To prove the validity of this approach to reconstruct climate conditions, this article exemplarily uses the Municipal Chapter Acts of a small town in southern Spain (Caravaca de la Cruz), which span the 1600–1900 period, and allows reconstructions to be obtained on a monthly basis. Using the same documentary source, the three approaches were used to derive respective climate reconstructions, which were then compared to assess climate signal consistency and to identify possible caveats in the methods. The three approaches led to a generally coherent series of secular variability in the hydrological conditions, which agrees well with previous study results. The COST approach is arguably more objective and less affected by changes in societal behaviour, which allows it to perform comparative studies in regions with different languages and traditions.

The blessing of the “year without summer”: Climatic and socioeconomic impact of the Krakatoa eruption (1883) in the south‐east of the Iberian Peninsula

“…Mild and moderate floods were inherent in the social system in the SIP and were perceived as positive to the extent that it was believed that the sediments increased the fertility of crop fields (Maurandi Guirado and Romero Díaz, 2000; Díez‐Herrero et al ., 2009). Additionally, there were no catastrophic frosts or other adverse situations in the SIP between 1883 and 1898 (Zamora Pastor, 2002; Gil Guirado, 2013; Gil‐Guirado et al ., 2019). We are unaware of revolts or social conflicts in the SIP between 1883 and 1898.…”

“…The climate in the study area (driest area with the most torrential rainfalls in the European Union) has led to a long history of social adaptation to climate changes in a struggle against droughts, floods, and heat (Gil‐Guirado et al ., 2019). This has created an economic system threatened by agricultural and subsistence crises (Espín‐Sánchez et al ., 2019).…”

Recovering Climate Data from Documentary Sources: A Study on the Climate in the South of Spain from 1792 to 1808

“…The reports are a brief summary in which the editors give information for each province. Therefore, the information provided is basically a spatial In historical climatology, there are various methods to reconstruct climatic conditions by analysing documentary sources [14][15][16][17][18][19]. In our case, given the nature of the data source under study (a printed periodical), and its weekly resolution in which not only extreme phenomena are described, the most appropriate method is to analyse the weather descriptors used in the texts.…”

Global climate goes regional, and vice versa: Reflecting on 14 years of the PAGES 2k Network

“…Regional studies also highlighted the problem of spatial gaps in hydroclimate data, which are obvious in the Southern Hemisphere (Nash et al 2016;Gergis and Henley 2017), as well as parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the Arctic (Linderholm et al 2018). Others highlighted the importance of historical documents for our understanding of past hydroclimatic changes and their societal impacts (Guevara-Murua et al 2018;Gil-Guirado et al 2019).…”