0000000000526256
AUTHOR
Christian Pfister
Climatic signatures in early modern European grain harvest yields
Abstract. The association between climate variability and grain harvest yields has been an important component of food security and economy in European history. Yet, inter-regional comparisons of climate–yield relationships have been hampered by locally varying data types and use of different statistical methods. Using a coherent statistical framework, considering the effects of diverse serial correlations on significance, we assess the temperature and hydroclimate (precipitation and drought) signatures in grain harvest yields across varying environmental settings of early modern (c. 1500–1800) Europe. An unprecedentedly large network of yield records from northern (Sweden), central (Switze…
Five centuries of Central European temperature extremes reconstructed from tree-ring density and documentary evidence
Future climate change will likely influence the frequency and intensity of weather extremes. As such events are by definition rare, long records are required to understand their characteristics, drivers, and consequences on ecology and society. Herein we provide a unique perspective on regional-scale temperature extremes over the past millennium, using three tree-ring maximum latewood density (MXD) chronologies from higher elevations in the European Alps. We verify the tree-ring-based extremes using documentary evidences from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Central Europe that allowed the identification of 44 summer extremes over the 1550-2003 period. These events include cold temperat…