Climate history

European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2020 Session CL1.20: Historical climatology and hydrology: the role of documentary evidence in the reconstruction of past (hydro)climate and its variabilities

The study demonstrates the responsiveness of Ottoman rice plantations to climate changes depending on archive data and OWDA  June July precipitation data. Tax entries, records concerning malaria, organization of the paddies and workforce, as well as one sample study of accounting books of a rice farm in Plovdiv (Filibe, Philipolis), show that rice data is important for research on climate, disease and landscape.

Irresponsible Napoleon? – or the winter of 1812

Nowadays, as the linkage of various sciences have been more frequently witnessed, old, often unserolved questions are seen in a new light. This paper presents the results of such a multidisciplinary (in this case, a historical-meteorological) research.

Napoleon’s way to his defeat was initiated by the monumental campaign to Russia in 1812. During the six-month-long campaign, the Grande Armée practically was totally perished by losing about half a million people. Most of these losses are originated in the various geographical and climatic conditions. Due to the vast distances, difficulties in the supply system became permanent. Soldiers often were starv ing. Later, different diseases appeared, and eventually, because of the fatigue, the awful weather never experienced before demanded more and more victims. Predominance of these factors was expedited by the Russians. With their withdrawal that, although, in the early periods it was not a conscious strategy, Napoleon after them, making his way into the interior of Russia unperceived, all along to Moscow. In the meantime, nor by the battle of Smolensk nor that of Borodino he could gain the political victory, i.e. the treaty of peace.

Bonaparte Napoleon is often accused of 'irresponsibility' as he wasted too much time in Moscow, consequently did not remain a sufficient amount of that to the withdrawal. What seems to be certain is that he collected adequate information on the characteristics of the winter in Russia. Being aware of this, we should conclude that he devoted enough time, i.e. three weeks to the withdrawal to Smolensk. Obviously, neither him nor any of his coevals could not be possibly know that the period of cooling would come in two weeks earlier than expected, nor that the winter of 1812 and 1813 would be the beginning of an other cooling period of the so-called Little Ice Age already lasting for centuries. Because of this, and particularly from this aspect, the emperor of France can not benamed irresponsible.

From the meteorological point of view, the withdrawal of this rememberable campaign, according to the records of Sgt. Bourgogne, was divided into the following three periods: early winter, remission and the stage of culmination. The reason for the set in of the cold weather earlier than expected was unfolded in the conjoint process of the eruption of La Soufrière volcano in 1812 and the unhindered inflow of arctic air masses from the North or that of cyclones from the West (causing also snow-fall) with their effects amplifying one another. The period of remission can be explained by the incursion of warm air masses from the South, whereas the culmination was caused by the expansion of the atmospheric formation of high pressure of Siberia.

I hope that by this research, the often essential co-operation between sciences have been pointed out, as well as it makes a contribution to the solution of this question.

The Ciuc-basin is known as one of the coldest regions of the country, where the forests are mainly formed of pines and this vision is regularly projected to the Medieval Times. Archaeological data does not confirm this presumption, on 3–15th century sites often appear carbonised oak pieces. Oak timber elements can be found also in medieval churches and manors. From the 3 –4th and 16–17th centuries there are several data regarding intensive metallurgy activities which needed a huge amount of hard wood, namely oak and beech. The former oak forests are mentioned in the written sources, their memory is proven by the place names and also by pollen-data of environment history researches. The main conclusions of the paper are: the better climate conditions of the post-roman and medieval periods were more likely with those of central Transylvania and allowed the development of local human communities. The internal low-situated (oak) forests were cleared
continuously specially in the 17–18th centuries. Once the climate changes of the small ice-age its effects were stronger in the Ciuc-depression due its high altitude and thermic inversion phenomenon. In these conditions the competition between species was won by the pines. The present flora and forest situation of the intra-mountain
depressions was formed by the fallowing factors: human interventions (clearing), cooling of the climate (“little ice age”) and competition among the species. The projection of the present environment situations into the historical times could lead to erroneous interpretations.

Bayerische Umwelt-, Klima und Konsumgeschichte“ Teil 1 u. 2, Kloster Banz 21./22.09.2017 und 8./9.03.2018, in: Umwelt-, Klima- und Konsumgeschichte. Fallstudien zu Süddeutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, hrsg. von Wolfgang Wüst, Gisela Drossbach. Berlin 2019, S. 413–432.

Keywords
Food, Meteorology, Climate, Agriculture, Subsistence crisis, Famine, Dietetics, Coenaesthesis, Seasons, Cookbooks

The study of the interrelationship between food and weather is a relatively new field of study. Until a few years ago the interdependence between atmospheric conditions and food production, preparation, and consumption was only occasionally researched – with a rather lopsided focus on the impact of the weather on harvests. However, recently a more systematic approach seems to be gaining momentum. This is leading, on the one hand, to a growing focus on the study of extreme weather circumstances and concomitant subsistence crises. Such anomalies and their often-catastrophic consequences – such as scarcity and famines – are now frequently explored in the context of the “Little Ice Age” that affected Europe between the thirteenth and nineteenth century. On the other hand, the influence of the weather on the food supply chain, as well as on the food habits of consumers who adapt their actual food choices to meteorological conditions, such as temperature and humidity, is gradually being discovered by researchers. The study of the close link between food systems, atmospheric conditions and individuals conditioned by the latter (a phenomenon known as “meteo-sensibility” or coenaesthesis) represents a new approach that offers us a better understanding of the two “total facts” that determine humankind in its attempts to come to terms with its environment and to reconcile nature and culture.

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Lecture for the course 070122 VO Global History - The Mongols and Global History (2020S) at the University of Vienna, directed by Dr. Francesca Fiaschetti (https://ufind.univie.ac.at/de/course.html?lv=070122&semester=2020S)
Guest Speaker: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences
Videolink
https://youtu.be/xoH8szWnNQs

The presentation discusses actual and hypothetical aspects of the interplay between the dynamics of Mongol imperial rule and environmental and climatic change across Eurasia, especially against the background of the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age in the 13th to 14th century and the outbreak and epidemic diffusion of the “Black Death”. It also tackles some recently proposed scenarios of climatic impacts on Mongol history, such as the contribution of beneficial environmental parameters in the steppes in the early 13th century to the establishment of Gengis Khan´s rule, the possible effect of weather extremes on the stop of Mongol expansion towards Central Europe in the 1240s and the assumption that the demographic impacts of Mongol warfare may have had a share in the overall global cooling of the 13th-14th centuries.

Fruit de différents projets scientifiques, cet ouvrage retrace quatre cents ans de fluctuations climatiques et d'événements extrêmes dans l'ouest de la France. Les tempêtes, inondations ou périodes de sécheresse se sont révélées particulièrement nombreuses par le passé. Par leur intensité et leur durée, ces phénomènes ont pu altérer de façon durable le fonctionnement des sociétés concernées.

Savant connu et reconnu pour ses apports à l’agriculture du siècle des Lumières, Duhamel du Monceau fait également figure de pionnier en météorologie. Pendant quarante ans, il a réalisé de nombreuses observations botanico-météorologiques qui offrent aujourd’hui une opportunité archivistique exceptionnelle pour l’histoire du climat. Elles autorisent une restitution fine de la variabilité du climat beauceron pour la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle. De plus, son parcours au sein de l’Académie royale des sciences révèle les différents réseaux nationaux et européens qui l’ont amené à intégrer les facteurs climatiques dans ses travaux scientifiques.