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A large scholarship currently holds that before the onset of anthropogenic global warming, natural climatic changes long provoked subsistence crises and, occasionally, civilizational collapses among human societies. This scholarship, which we term the 'history of climate and society' (HCS), is pursued by researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including archaeologists, economists, geneticists, geographers, historians, linguists and palaeoclimatologists. We argue that, despite the wide interest in HCS, the field suffers from numerous biases, and often does not account for the local effects and spatiotemporal heterogeneity of past climate changes or the challenges of interpreting historical sources. Here we propose an interdisciplinary framework for uncovering climate-society interactions that emphasizes the mechanics by which climate change has influenced human history, and the uncertainties inherent in discerning that influence across different spatiotemporal scales. Although we acknowledge that climate change has sometimes had destructive effects on past societies, the application of our framework to numerous case studies uncovers five pathways by which populations survived--and often thrived--in the face of climatic pressures. This Review proposes an interdisciplinary framework for researching climate-society interactions that focuses on the mechanisms through which climate change has influenced societies, and the uncertainties of discerning this influence across different spatiotemporal scales., Author(s): Dagomar Degroot [sup.1] , Kevin Anchukaitis [sup.2] [sup.3] , Martin Bauch [sup.4] , Jakob Burnham [sup.1] , Fred Carnegy [sup.5] , Jianxin Cui [sup.6] , Kathryn de Luna [sup.1] [...]

ClimeApp is a newly developed web-based processing tool for the state-of-the-art ModE-RA paleo-climate reanalysis. It presents temperature, precipitation and pressure reconstructions with global coverage and monthly resolution for the period 1422 to 2008 C.E. These can be visualized as maps or timeseries and compared with historical or other climate-related information through composite, correlation and regression functions. Alongside ModE-RA, ClimeApp allows access to the ModE-Sim climate simulation, which is the basis of ModE-RA before assimilating early instrumental, documentary and proxy data. Together with the sensitivity experiment ModE-RAclim, these three data sets allow researchers to separate the effects of external forcing from internal climate variability. The app is designed to allow quick data processing for climatologists and easy use for non-climatologists. Specifically, it aims to help bring climate into the humanities, where climatological data still has huge potential to advance research. This paper outlines the development, processing and applications of ClimeApp, and presents an updated analysis of the calamitous Tambora volcanic eruption and the 1816 'year without a summer' in Europe, using the new ModE datasets. ClimeApp is available at https://mode-ra.unibe.ch/climeapp/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 the use of different statistical methods. Using a coherent statistical framework, considering the effects of diverse serial correlations on statistical significance, we assess the temperature and hydroclimate (precipitation and drought) signatures in grain harvest yields across varying environmental settings of early modern (ca. 1500–1800) Europe. An unprecedentedly large network of yield records from northern (Sweden), central (Switzerland), and southern (Spain) Europe are compared with a diverse set of seasonally and annually resolved palaeoclimate reconstructions. Considering the effects of different crop types and time series frequencies, we find within regions consistent climate–harvest yield associations characterized by a significant summer soil moisture signal in Sweden, winter temperature and precipitation signals in Switzerland, and spring and annual mean temperature signals in Spain. The regional-scale climate–harvest associations are weaker than the recently revealed climate signals in early modern grain prices but similar in strength to modern climate–harvest relationships at comparable spatial scales. This is a noteworthy finding considering the uncertainties inherent in both historical harvest and palaeoclimate data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 (Switzerland) and southern (Spain) Europe is compared with a diverse set of seasonally and annually resolved palaeoclimate reconstructions. Considering the effects of different crop types and time-series frequencies, we find within regions consistent climate-harvest yield patterns characterised by a significant summer soil moisture signal in Sweden, a winter temperature and precipitation signal in Switzerland, and spring and annual mean temperature signals in Spain. The regional scale climate-harvest associations are weaker than the recently revealed signals in early modern grain prices, albeit similar to those observed in modern climate-harvest relationships on comparable spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid-17th century is characterized by a cluster of explosive volcanic eruptions in the 1630s and 1640s, deteriorating climatic conditions culminating in the Maunder Minimum as well as political instability and famine in regions of Western and Northern Europe as well as China and Japan. This contribution investigates the sources of the eruptions of the 1630s and 1640s and their possible impact on contemporary climate using ice-core, tree-ring and historical evidence, but will also look into the socio-political context in which they occurred and the human responses they may have triggered. Three distinct sulfur peaks are found in the Greenland ice core record in 1637, 1641-42 and 1646. In Antarctica, only one unambiguous sulfate spike is recorded, peaking in 1642. The resulting bipolar sulfur peak in 1641-1642 can likely be ascribed to the eruption of Mount Parker (6° N, Philippines) on December 26, 1640, but sulfate emitted from Koma-ga-take (42° N, Japan) volcano on July 31, 1641, has potentially also contributed to the sulphate concentrations observed in Greenland at this time. The smaller peaks in 1637 and 1646 can be potentially attributed to the eruptions of Hekla (63° N, Iceland) and Shiveluch (56° N, Russia), respectively. To date, however, none of the candidate volcanoes for the mid-17th century sulphate peaks have been confirmed with tephra preserved in ice cores. Tree-ring and written sources point to severe and cold conditions in the late 1630s and early 1640s in various parts of Europe, and to poor harvests. Yet the early 17th century was also characterized by widespread warfare across Europe - and in particular the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), rendering any attribution of socio-economic crisis to volcanism challenging. In China and Japan, historical sources point to extreme droughts and famines starting in the late 1630s, and thus preceding the eruptions by some years. The case of the eruption cluster in the late 1630s and early 1640s and the climatic and societal conditions recorded in its aftermath thus offer a textbook example of difficulties in (i) unambiguously distinguishing volcanically induced cooling, wetting or drying from natural climate variability, and (ii) attributing political instability, harvest failure and famines solely to volcanic climatic impacts. This example shows that the impacts of past volcanism must always be studied within the contemporary socio-economic contexts, but that it is also time to most past reductive framings and sometimes reactionary oppositional stances in which climate (and environment more broadly) either is or is not deemed an important contributor to major historical events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past volcanic eruptions and their climatic impacts have been linked increasingly with co-occurring societal crises - like crop failures and famines - in recent research. Yet, as many of the volcanic cooling studies have a supra-regional or hemispheric focus, establishing pathways from climatic effects of an eruption to human repercussions has remained very challenging due to high spatial variability of socio-environmental systems. This, in turn, may render a distinction of coincidence from causation difficult. In this study, we employ micro-regionally resolved natural and written sources to study three 17th century volcanic eruptions (i.e. 1600 Huaynaputina, 1640/1641 Koma-ga-take/Parker, and 1695 unidentified eruptions) to look into their climatic as well as socioeconomic impacts among rural agricultural society in Ostrobothnia (Finland) with high temporal and spatial precision. Tree-ring and grain tithe data indicate that all three eruptions would have caused significant summer season temperature cooling and poor grain harvest in the region. Yet, tax debt records reveal that the socioeconomic consequences varied considerably among the eruptions as well as in time, space, and within the society. Whether the volcanic events had a strong or weak socioeconomic effect depended on various factors, such as the prevailing agro-ecosystem, resource availability, material capital, physical and immaterial networks, and institutional practices. These factors influenced societal vulnerability and resilience to cold pulses and the resulting harvest failures caused by the eruptions. This paper proposes that, besides detecting coinciding human calamities, more careful investigation at the micro-regional scale has a clear added value as it can provide deeper understanding on why and among whom the distal volcanic eruptions resulted in different societal impacts. Such understanding, in turn, can contribute to interdisciplinary research, advice political decision-making, and enhance scientific outreach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates 165 studies from various disciplines, published between 2000 and 2019, which in different ways link past climate variability and change to human history in medieval and early modern Europe (here, c. 700–1815 CE). Within this review, we focus on the identification and interpretation of causal links between changes in climate and in human societies. A revised climate–society impact order model of historical climate–society interactions is presented and applied to structure the findings of the past 20 years' scholarship. Despite considerable progress in research about past climate–society relations, partly expedited by new palaeoclimate data, we identify limitations to knowledge, including geographical biases, a disproportional attention to extremely cold periods, and a focus on crises. Furthermore, recent scholarship shows that the limitations with particular disciplinary approaches can be successfully overcome through interdisciplinary collaborations. We conclude the article by proposing recommendations for future directions of research in the climatic change–human history nexus. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the last millennium, mankind was affected by prolonged deviations from the climate mean state. While periods like the Maunder Minimum in the 17th century have been assessed in greater detail, earlier cold periods such as the 15th century received much less attention due to the sparse information available. Based on new evidence from different sources ranging from proxy archives to model simulations, it is now possible to provide an end-to-end assessment about the climate state during an exceptionally cold period in the 15th century, the role of internal, unforced climate variability and external forcing in shaping these extreme climatic conditions, and the impacts on and responses of the medieval society in Central Europe. Climate reconstructions from a multitude of natural and human archives indicate that, during winter, the period of the early Spörer Minimum (1431-1440 CE) was the coldest decade in Central Europe in the 15th century. The particularly cold winters and normal but wet summers resulted in a strong seasonal cycle that challenged food production and led to increasing food prices, a subsistence crisis, and a famine in parts of Europe. As a consequence, authorities implemented adaptation measures, such as the installation of grain storage capacities, in order to be prepared for future events. The 15th century is characterised by a grand solar minimum and enhanced volcanic activity, which both imply a reduction of seasonality. Climate model simulations show that periods with cold winters and strong seasonality are associated with internal climate variability rather than external forcing. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that the reconstructed extreme climatic conditions during this decade occurred by chance and in relation to the partly chaotic, internal variability within the climate system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past agricultural responses to climate variability can helps us to better understand the current and future impacts of climate change on agricultural production. We studied rye (Secale cereale) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) yield responses to temperature fluctuations in Finland during the period 1861-1913. Our analyses demonstrate the high sensitivity of non-industrialised northern agriculture to temperature anomalies. We found evidence of a strong relationship between monthly and seasonal mean temperatures and crop yields. In particular, high spring temperatures were associated with higher yields. Additionally, we tested temperature-sensitive tree-ring series for their value in indicating previous agricultural outputs. The results imply that tree-ring proxies (in particular, maximum latewood density) can provide novel material for studies of historical periods and locations where instrumentally measured climate and harvest data are not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]