# Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era



## anotherlayer (Sep 14, 2020)

Slightly interesting read: Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era

This research seems to lay out 5 distinct 'drought<->flood' scenarios:

- The great drought of 1921
- The great drought of 1893
- The Irish famine of 1740–1741
- The great droughts of 1616 and 1540
- The great European famine of 1315–1317

Another related article: Geologists have found the "great flood and drought" in the history of medieval Europe (requires translation)



> An unusual atlas describing changes in precipitation in the Old World over the past two thousand years helped scientists find out that the “great famine” of 1315-1317 in Europe as a whole was generated by the “great flood”, and the current conflict in Syria was drought 2006- 2010 years...
> 
> ...The medieval chronicles of the beginning of the 14th century tell of a "great famine" that struck Europe in the spring of 1315 and lasted two years. At that time, *thousands of people died every day from lack of food*, parents sold and *ate their children*, cannibalism was widespread. Its cause, as the chroniclers wrote, was unusually bad and unstable weather....


They ate their children? Yum! And, where is this atlas? I dunno, it's a dumb article that just ends without even pointing us to this magical atlas. My bad, my bad...





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## dreamtime (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: dreamtimeDate: 2019-01-22 16:48:56Reaction Score: 1


I'm not sure they did that. There are basically no reliable written sources beyond 1500. Often even 1700. It's not that the texts the claim is based on doesn't exist - they probably do. But usually they do not come with any dates, and the context is elusive. The context was re-arranged by historians or monks.

Primary sources:

- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.2307/2848143
- Unusual Climate in Northwest Europe During the Period 1730 to 1745 Based on Instrumental and Documentary Data
- CP - Droughts in the Czech Lands, 1090–2012 AD

This should lead to the original claims somewhere, although I haven't tried to dig further.


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## Archive (Apr 26, 2021)

> Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: jd755Date: 2019-01-22 16:50:20Reaction Score: 1


580 page pdf here that might be of use. https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/weather1.pdf


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