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The European Great Famine of 1315–1317 triggered one of the worst population collapses in European history and ranks as the single worst European famine in mortality as a proportion of population. Historical records point to torrential rainfall, land saturation, crop failure, and prolonged flooding as important causes of the famine. Here we use the tree-ring based Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) to show that the average of each growing season preceding the Great Famine years (1314–1316) was the fifth wettest over Europe from 1300 to 2012 C.E. The spatial and temporal characteristics of our OWDA-estimated anomalies are in excellent agreement with available historical accounts. We also characterize a mode of European hydroclimate variability that is associated with the Great Famine, which we term the “Great Famine mode.” This mode emerges as the leading mode of European hydroclimate variability from 1300–2012 and is strongly associated with extreme wet and dry events in Europe over the last millennium. Exceptionally wet growing seasons, compared to the past 700 years, preceded the European Great Famine of 1315-1317 and are associated with a newly identified hydroclimate pattern, according to analyses of Europe-wide tree ring data.

The European Great Famine of 1315-1317, in which millions starved, triggered one of the worst population collapses in European history and ranks as the single worst calamity recorded in European history in relative mortality. Historical records point to torrential rainfall, land saturation, and prolonged flooding as important causes of the event. Here we use the tree-ring based Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) to demonstrate the full geographical extent of the pluvial that triggered the event and show 1314-1316 to be the fifth wettest three-year interval over Northern Europe from 1290 to 2000 C.E. The spatial and temporal characteristics of our OWDA-estimated anomalies are in excellent agreement with available historical accounts, suggesting that our estimates can provide insight into hydroclimate conditions during the Great Famine over regions where historical accounts are sparse. Our estimates furthermore suggest that a dominant mode of variability not well represented in the instrumental interval likely contributed to the Great Famine.