Winter air temperature variations in western Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages (AD 750–1300)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12265383
AutoresC Pfister (0000-0002-5920-4468, Research group for Regional and Environmental History, University of Bern, Unitobler, 3000 Bern 9, Switzerland, autor de correspondencia), Jürg Luterbacher (0000-0002-8569-0973, University of Bern), Gabriela Schwarz-Zanetti (0000-0002-6952-5599), Martin Wegmann (0000-0002-5294-2978, University of Bern)
Año1998
Volumen8
Número5
Páginas535-552
Fecha de publicación1998-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Holocene (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0959-6836 • E-ISSN: 1477-0911
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1191/095968398675289943
OpenAlexW2006242487
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas52

In this paper an attempt is made to reconstruct air temperature variations in winter (December, January and February) from 2500 documentary data over the period ad 750–1300 for a region comprising the Benelux countries, eastern France, western Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy. Anomalous (warm and cold) winters were classified on the basis of proxy information on frost, freezing of water bodies, duration of snowcover and untimely activity of vegetation using semiquantitative indices. For the most severe winters during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP) as well as for the outstanding warm and dry winter ad 1289/90, possible analogue cases from the last 300 years are considered, analysed, synoptically interpreted and compared with each other. It is concluded that severe winters were somewhat less frequent and less extreme during the MWP, ad 900–1300, than in the ninth century and from 1300 to 1900. Mean air temperatures for 30 year. periods were estimated from linear regression models including indices and instrumental measurements. From ad 1090 to 1179 winter temperatures were at the level of the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA). From ad 1180 to 1299 they were at that of the twentieth century. The warm and stable winter climate in the thirteenth century supported subtropical plants such as olive trees in the Po valley (northern Italy) and fig trees around Cologne (Germany). The period ad 1300–1329 which marks the transition to the LIA was 1°C colder. It is concluded that the 1961–90 level of winter temperatures in western central Europe is still within the threshold of natural variability of the last thousand years, albeit at its upper boundary

Air temperature · Climatology · Frost (temperature · Geography · Glacier · Little ice age · Meteorology · Period (music · Physical geography · Proxy (statistics · Subtropics · Western europe · Environmental Science · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics · Tree-ring climate responses · Geology