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| Climate and societal interactions. This model 1 captures the way extreme climate events can cascade through society (black arrows), and the adjustment and/or adaptation strategies societies can respond with (grey arrows). Figure adapted with permission from ref. 13, © 2015 Schwabe.
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The 1815 eruption of Tambora caused an unusually cold summer in much of Europe in 1816. The extreme weather led to poor harvests and malnutrition, but also demonstrated the capability of humans to adapt and help others in worse conditions. L arge volcanic eruptions in the tropics can temporarily alter climate around the world, causing global coolin...
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... both economically and socially 3,10-12 . Modelling of climate and society interactions 13 -albeit simplified -suggests that extreme weather events can have a range of consequences, including immediate first-order effects on biomass production and water availability as well as fourth-order impacts such as an increase in charitable giving (Fig. ...
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... 1), namely between the years 1280-1350 (Wolf Minimum), 1460-1540 (Spörer's Minimum), 1645-1715, and 1792-1820 (Dalton's Minimum). This situation resulted in intense climatic variability including periods of intense cold with snow storms, avalanches or heavy rainfall and floods, but also periods of heatwaves and droughts (Luterbacher et al., 2001, Mann et al., 2009Brázdil et al., 2010;Miller et al., 2012;Luterbacher & Pfister, 2015;Rohr, 2018;Oliva et al., 2018). ...
... At this stage there were volcanic eruptions that, combined with low solar radiation, lowered the temperature. Extreme weather events followed, such as periods of prolonged drought, intense floods and cooler summers (Brázdil et al., 2010;Luterbacher & Pfister, 2015;Oliva et al., 2018). ...
The Modern Age and the beginning of the Contemporary period were deeply marked by a
climatic worsening known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). Although with different intensities and peaks of incidence, its greatest influence seems to happen in the Northern Hemisphere. Here, due to the vastness of the matter, we only address the case of Europe. As this climatic phase can be defined through glaciological and climatic criteria, its chronology of occurrence is not consensual. In the European case, despite different proposals for chronological marking, the “LIA” would have taken place between the end of the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP) and the second half of the 19th century (1300-1850). “LIA” was mainly due to a combination of natural factors that impacted the lives of people at that time. The expansion of volcanic activity and the consequent increase in dust and gases in the atmosphere (preventing solar
penetration), combined with phases of lower incidence of solar radiant energy on the Earth’s surface and the deceleration of thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic, contributed to changes in patterns thermal and rainfall. In general, in the Northern Hemisphere, winters have become harsher, and summers have become colder. It is estimated that the average
annual temperatures reached values between 0.6 and 1 degrees Celsius lower than the average recorded for the 20th century. At first reaching the highest latitudes, the cooling process
expanded to Southern Europe, reaching particularly lower temperatures during the main periods of solar minimums, namely between the years 1280-1350 (Wolf Minimum),
1460-1540 (Spörer’s Minimum), 1645-1715 (Maunder’s Minimum), and 1792-1820 (Dalton’s Minimum). This situation resulted in intense climatic variability including periods of intense cold with snowstorms, avalanches or heavy rainfall and floods, but also periods of heatwaves and droughts.
... In 1991 the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines released nearly 20 Mt of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) into the stratosphere which oxidized into sulfate aerosols, which then caused a global cooling of the oceans of about 0.3°C and prolonged an El Nino event [1][2][3][4] . In 1815 the Tambora eruption in Indonesia injected three times more SO 2 into the stratosphere, which produced 0.7°C global cooling, with profound environmental impacts, including the "year without a summer" in 1816 [5][6][7] . Following the Tambora eruption, anomalous cooling and reduced precipitation provoked crop failure, famine, and the outbreak of diseases such as cholera in North America, Europe and Asia. ...
Supervolcano eruptions have occurred throughout Earth’s history and have major environmental impacts. These impacts are mostly associated with the attenuation of visible sunlight by stratospheric sulfate aerosols, which causes cooling and deceleration of the water cycle. Supereruptions have been assumed to cause so-called volcanic winters that act as primary evolutionary factors through ecosystem disruption and famine, however, winter conditions alone may not be sufficient to cause such disruption. Here we use Earth system model simulations to show that stratospheric sulfur emissions from the Toba supereruption 74,000 years ago caused severe stratospheric ozone loss through a radiation attenuation mechanism that only moderately depends on the emission magnitude. The Toba plume strongly inhibited oxygen photolysis, suppressing ozone formation in the tropics, where exceptionally depleted ozone conditions persisted for over a year. This effect, when combined with volcanic winter in the extra-tropics, can account for the impacts of supereruptions on ecosystems and humanity. Stratospheric sulfur emissions from the Toba supereruption about 74,000 years ago suppressed ozone formation which caused severe tropical ozone layer depletion and enhanced solar ultraviolet radiation stress, according to Earth system model simulations.
... However, the fact that the farm reports and memoranda book start part-way through 1816 may reflect a desire to record farm experiences based on an unusual year at that point. June saw some of the worst impacts across Europe, with anomalously cold and wet weather (Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015). There have been several attempts to use diaries from this period to examine the effects of the Tambora eruption in the UK. Lee and MacKenzie (2010), for example, used a farmer's diary from near Manchester (about 50 km north of Trentham), which recorded wind direction, barometric pressure and observations of weather and other phenomena (including red skies), to examine the impact of the Tambora eruption. ...
To date few studies have reconstructed weather from
personal diaries (also known as private diaries). In this paper, we consider
different methods of indexing daily weather information, specifically
precipitation, from eighteenth and nineteenth-century personal diaries. We
examine whether there is a significant correlation between indexed weather
information and local instrumental records for the period, thereby assessing
the potential of discursive materials in reconstructing precipitation
series. We demonstrate the potential for the use of diaries that record
weather incidentally rather than as the primary purpose, and the value and
utility of diaries covering short periods when used alongside nearby
contemporary diaries. We show that using multiple overlapping personal
diaries can help to produce a more objective record of the weather,
overcoming some of the challenges of working with qualitative data. This
paper demonstrates indices derived from such qualitative sources can create
valuable records of precipitation. There is the potential to repeat the
methodology described here using earlier material or material from further
away from extant instrumental records, thereby addressing spatial and
temporal gaps in current knowledge globally.
... In total, this assessment includes 12 monographs and 153 journal articles and book chapters (Table A1). We structured this review after an updated conceptional climate-society impact order model (Figure 2), which was first introduced by Ingram, Farmer, and Wigley (1981), and later modified by , Krämer (2012Krämer ( , 2015, and Luterbacher and Pfister (2015). We revised the model since it did not fully consider cultural responses to climatic changes at all levels (Degroot, 2018a) (see further Section 4.2). ...
... As already emphasized by , Krämer (2012Krämer ( , 2015, and Luterbacher and Pfister (2015), the influence of climate is more challenging to identify the further down in the impact-order model the events are examined. Our review agrees with this notion. ...
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
(A) Temporal coverage of the 165 studies examining associations between climatic variations and human history for different regions between 700 and 1815 CE which were reviewed considering (B) a revised schematic model of historical climate–society interactions.
... After the eruption of Tambora Volcano in 1815, Europe experienced severe chilling damage. From 1816 to 1818, Central Europe had a bad crop harvest and saw increased crop price, which caused a famine (Brá zdil et al., 2016;Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015); in 1816, potato yields in Switzerland reduced by 20%-50% (Flückiger et al., 2017); tens of thousands of people from the Britain and Ireland fled to the United States to escape the famine, which made the labour market of Philadelphia filled with migrant workers in 1817 and 1818 (Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015). Study (Crowley, 2000) has found that the contribution of volcanic eruptions to decadal-scale changes in surface temperature rose from 22%-23% over the entire preanthropogenic to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 41%-49% during the Little Ice Age (1400-1850), as a result, the temperature drops. ...
... After the eruption of Tambora Volcano in 1815, Europe experienced severe chilling damage. From 1816 to 1818, Central Europe had a bad crop harvest and saw increased crop price, which caused a famine (Brá zdil et al., 2016;Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015); in 1816, potato yields in Switzerland reduced by 20%-50% (Flückiger et al., 2017); tens of thousands of people from the Britain and Ireland fled to the United States to escape the famine, which made the labour market of Philadelphia filled with migrant workers in 1817 and 1818 (Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015). Study (Crowley, 2000) has found that the contribution of volcanic eruptions to decadal-scale changes in surface temperature rose from 22%-23% over the entire preanthropogenic to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 41%-49% during the Little Ice Age (1400-1850), as a result, the temperature drops. ...
Volcanic eruptions, climate changes and their influences on crop harvests and social development are of increasing concern in science communities. Using a dataset of crop harvest scores of southwest China from 1730 to 1910, which was derived from the memorials to the emperors in the Qing Dynasty of China, reconstructed climate proxies and the chronology of large volcanic eruptions occurring between 10°S and 15°N, we analysed possible relationships between crop harvests, climate changes and volcanic eruptions. In addition, some archives of policies and measures related to crops and social development extracted from the chronicles were used to analyse social resilience when faced with poor harvests. The results show that crop harvests in the study area generally increased with fluctuations when there were less low-latitude large volcanic eruptions from 1730 to 1810. However, from 1811 to 1910, volcanoes at low latitudes erupted more frequently, which contributed to concurrent low temperature and drought. Meanwhile, the crop harvests showed a step-down decrease during the following periods of 1810s, 1850s, 1870s and 1890s. Though, the local social system was certainly resilient in facing of such climate and agriculture disasters, i.e., the local society remained stable without significant famine, large-scale migration or social unrest until 1911. The strong resilience of local social systems owed largely to various relieving measures, such as, building barns, exempting or reducing local taxes, allocating farmland to immigrants, and central government dominated grain purchasing and distribution to alleviate disasters. Online
available at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abb159/meta
... °C ± 0.64 °C). This rapid temperature increase is centered around the Tambora eruption in 1815 that is marked by cold FMAM&SO temperatures in the 1816 "year without a summer" [74] (t1816 = −2.1 °C ± 0.55 °C, the 14th coldest year since 1350 CE). Whether this change from colder to warmer conditions is related to external climate forcings could perhaps be evaluated by comparison with climate model simulations [75]. ...
The presence of an ancient, high-elevation pine forest in the Natural Park of Sierras de Cazorla in southern Spain, including some trees reaching >700 years, stimulated efforts to develop high-resolution temperature reconstructions in an otherwise drought-dominated region. Here, we present a reconstruction of spring and fall temperature variability derived from black pine tree ring maximum densities reaching back to 1350 Coefficient of Efficiency (CE). The reconstruction is accompanied by large uncertainties resulting from low interseries correlations among the single trees and a limited number of reliable instrumental stations in the study region. The reconstructed temperature history reveals warm conditions during the early 16th and 19th centuries that were of similar magnitude to the warm temperatures recorded since the late 20th century. A sharp transition from cold conditions in the late 18th century (t1781–1810 = −1.15 °C ± 0.64 °C) to warm conditions in the early 19th century (t1818–1847 = −0.06 °C ± 0.49 °C) is centered around the 1815 Tambora eruption (t1816 = −2.1 °C ± 0.55 °C). The new reconstruction from southern Spain correlates significantly with high-resolution temperature histories from the Pyrenees located ~600 km north of the Cazorla Natural Park, an association that is temporally stable over the past 650 years (r1350–2005 > 0.3, p < 0.0001) and particularly strong in the high-frequency domain (rHF > 0.4). Yet, only a few of the reconstructed cold extremes (1453, 1601, 1816) coincide with large volcanic eruptions, suggesting that the severe cooling events in southern Spain are controlled by internal dynamics rather than external (volcanic) forcing.
... This author revealed that the coldest summer was in 1258, some decades before the onset of the LIA, following the largest volcanic eruption recognized in the current era, by the Samalas Volcano, Lombok Island, Indonesia, in 1257. Some centuries later, the Tambora Volcano, on Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, produced a new, large eruption in 1815, which caused "the year without summer" in 1816 (Luterbacher and Pfister 2015), and probably was, at least in part, responsible for a glacial expansion in the following years. Other volcanic eruptions also had a significant influence on climatic fluctuations and glacier advances. ...
Following the Holocene Thermal Maximum, dated between 11 and 6 ka, the Neoglacial period was one of the progressive, fluctuating cooling that peaked during the Little Ice Age (LIA). The almost total absence of glacial tills prior to the LIA in the Pyrenees forces recourse to a high variety of proxies, including lacustrine sediments, palynological records, dendroclimatology, ice cores from glaciers and caves, speleothems, historical documentation and glacial records. This has enabled us to identify several colder periods during the mid- and late-Holocene: (i) the first phase of the Neoglacial period occurred at some time around 6 ka; (ii) a glacial pulse immediately before 3.4 ka; (iii) a glacial re-advance during the Dark Ages, i.e., immediately before the Medieval Climate Anomaly, between the fourth and ninth centuries; and (iv) the Little Ice Age, which started at the beginning of the fourteenth century and finished in the mid-nineteenth century. During the LIA, there was remarkable climate variability, with two, and probably three, glacial pulses, mainly between 1620 and 1715 and in the first half of the nineteenth century. Of all of the Holocene cold periods, most of the European paleoclimatic records coincide on the occurrence of the LIA. For the remaining Holocene cold periods, European records show high variability and uncertainty, particularly for the onset of the Neoglacial, although the phases of glacial pulses in the Pyrenees broadly coincide with those identified in the Alps and northern Europe.
... Dendrochronological studies have provided evidence of the impact of volcanic eruptions on forest ecosystems located hundreds of kilometers away from the volcano or situated near the volcanic cone (e.g., Biondi et al., 2003;Yamaguchi and Lawrence, 1993). Large-scale effects due to the injections of aerosols into the stratosphere cause surface cooling such as the 1815 Tambora eruption, which was followed by one of the coldest years recorded in the northern Hemisphere, often referred to as 'the year without summer' (Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015). These large-scale effects have been profusely recorded on temperature-sensitive tree-ring records worldwide, with reductions of tree-ring width or maximum density (e.g. ...
The Popocatépetl volcano resumed its eruptive activity in 1994 and is still active. The largest eruption recorded during this new stage of activity occurred in December 2000. We traced the volcanic activity signal in tree-rings from Pinus hartwegii trees located in the north slope of the volcano, located at ∼3 km from the volcanic cone. Annually resolved tree-ring widths, elemental and stable δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O isotope composition were measured during the period 1989–2014 to study the effects of the volcanic activity on trees. Our results indicate a high increase in the concentration of metal elements (Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Li, Mo, Ni, Pb, Rb, Sr, Ti, Zn) in tree rings following the major 2000 volcanic eruption, compared to the pre-eruption period from 1989 to 1993. Other chemical elements such as Al, K and S peaked 2 years later, in the 2003 tree ring, that matched with the formation of a very narrow ring that year. This sharp reduction of growth was probably driven by a combination of harsh climatic conditions (drought) with the lagged negative effects of the 2000 eruption. Carbon isotope discrimination (Δ¹³C) and δ¹⁸O increased from 1995 to 2006, suggesting reduced stomatal conductance, photosynthetic activity and water use efficiency due to the large dust veil covering the study zone. The variation of relevant elements (Ca, Mn) showing significant correlations with tree growth, Δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O can be attributed to the selective availability of elements following the soil acidification caused by the volcanic activity. Our findings suggest that the recent activity of the Popocatépetl might have increased tree vulnerability, as reflected in the sharp reduction of growth following the drought recorded 2 years after the large eruption of December 2000. Our results warn about the cumulative negative effects of volcanic activity and harsh climatic conditions on tree growth and functioning.
... Years without summer may indeed occur in snowbeds and may have selected for such a safety-margin. Either, record cold years such as 1816, the famous year without summer (no snow melt at elevation >2000 m) after the Tambora eruption in 1815 (Luterbacher and Pfister 2015), or a peculiar combination of a snow rich winter with massive winddriven snow allocation towards depressions as occurred in patches near our field station in 1999 (pers. observation C. K.) may challenge snowbed plants and explain evolutionary selection for such huge reserves. ...
All plant species reach a low temperature range limit when either low temperature extremes exceed their freezing tolerance or when their metabolism becomes too restricted. In this study, we explore the ultimate thermal limit of plant tissue formation exemplified by a plant species that seemingly grows through snow. By a combination of studies in alpine snowbeds and under controlled environmental conditions, we demonstrate and quantify that the clonal herb Soldanella pusilla (Primulaceae) does indeed grow its entire flowering shoot at 0 °C. We show that plants resume growth under 2–3 m of snow in mid-winter, following an internal clock, with the remaining period under snow until snow melt (mostly in July) sufficient to produce a flowering shoot that is ready for pollination. When snow pack gets thin, the flowering shoot intercepts and re-radiates long-wave solar radiation, so that snow and ice gently melt around the fragile shoot and the flowers emerge without any mechanical interaction. We evidence bud preformation in the previous season and enormous non-structural carbohydrate reserves in tissues (mainly below ground) in the form of soluble sugars (largely stachyose) that would support basic metabolism for more than 2 entire years under snow. However, cell-wall formation at 0 °C appears to lack unknown strengthening factors, including lignification (assessed by confocal Raman spectroscopy imaging) that require between a few hours or a day of warmth after snow melt to complete tissue strengthening. Complemented with a suite of anatomical data, the work opens a window towards understanding low temperature limits of plant growth in general, with potential relevance for winter crops and trees at the natural climatic treeline.
... Volcanoes are a substantial source of gases and aerosols to the atmosphere. A major scientific challenge is the quantification of volcanic gas emissions for the understanding of eruptive processes and to assess the overall impact and climate change response [1][2][3][4]. It has been demonstrated that emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) by volcanoes in quiescent non-eruptive stages (passive degassing) [5][6][7][8][9] may significantly impact the overall sulphur budget of the Earth's atmosphere compared to other natural sources or anthropogenic activities. ...
... Since the correlation points present a compact shape it confirms that both instruments capture the same type of information in the plume. We derived a second order polynomial fit in the diluted plume (green line in Figure 13): í µí±¦ 1.36 10 í µí±¥ 1.55 í µí±¥ 501.27 (1) where y stands for the SO2 SCD in the IR image and x for the SO2 SCD in the UV image. We also derived a linear fit (red line in Figure 13) to roughly give us the coefficient existing between SO2 SCD in the IR and in the UV images. ...
Quantification of gaseous emission fluxes from volcanoes can yield valuable insights on processes occurring in the Earth’s interior as part of hazard monitoring. It is also an important task in the framework of climate change, in order to refine estimates of natural emissions. Passive open-path UltraViolet (UV) scattered observation by UV camera allows the imaging of volcanic plumes and evaluation of sulfur dioxide (SO2) fluxes at high temporal resolution during daytime. Another technique of imaging is now available in the InfraRed (IR) spectral domain. Infrared hyperspectral imagers have the potential to overcome the boundary of daytime sampling of the UV, providing measurements also during the night and giving access simultaneously to additional relevant gas species. In this context the IMAGETNA campaign of measurements took place at Mt Etna (Italy) in June 2015. Three different IR imagers (commercial and under developments) were deployed, together with a Fourier Transform InfraRed spectrometer (FTIR) instrument, a UV camera, a Long Wavelength InfraRed (LWIR) camera and a radiometer. We present preliminary results obtained by the two IR cameras under development, and then the IR hyperspectral imager results, coming from full physics retrieval, are compared to those of the UV camera. The comparison points out an underestimation of the SO2 Slant Column Densities (SCD) of the UV camera by a factor of 3.6. The detailed study of the retrieved SO2 SCD highlights the promising application of IR imaging in volcanology for remotely volcanic plume gas measurements. It also provides a way to investigate uncertainties in the SO2 SCD imaging in the UV and the IR.
