Drought in Central Europe in 1540

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The drought in Central Europe in 1540 was an extreme climatological event with diverse effects on natural areas and human communities. In various paleoclimatological studies, the temperature and precipitation conditions were reconstructed and partly related to the current and future climatic conditions.

On the basis of historical records in science, it is predominantly assumed that it was an eleven-month period during which it rained only sparingly or practically no rain in large parts of Europe and thus it could have been a mega-drought . The event was triggered by an unusually stable high pressure area ( omegalage ) blocking the Atlantic air currents , which particularly affected Central Europe, while at the same time cool showers prevailed in western Russia.

Scientific evaluation and discussion

The assumption of a mega-drought in 1540 is supported above all by more than 300 contemporary chronicles from all over Europe, which unanimously describe the effects of prolonged drought and heat, such as a pronounced precipitation deficit, the extremely low level of large rivers, large-scale forest fires , the lowering of the groundwater level in connection with the drying up of wells and the serious consequences for agriculture and livestock farming. The extensive weather diary of the rector of the University of Cracow , Marcin Biem , whose records allow the amount of precipitation in the Cracow area for the year 1540 to be reconstructed statistically, is regarded as a particularly reliable source .

In contrast to this, a study published in 2015 based on the evaluation of growth rings of various European tree species ( dendrochronology , also tree ring dating ) came to the conclusion that the analyzes carried out did not give any indications of an exceptional drought in the course of 1540. In their reply ("Reply"), the authors of the first-mentioned work (Wetter et al. ) Pointed out that growth rings sometimes reproduce hot and dry extremes incompletely or with a delay, with special emphasis on the fact that in recent times climatic "outliers" there are often discrepancies between instrumentally determined and dendrochronological data ("divergence problem") .

A publication published in 2016 assumes that the mean summer temperature in 1540 was above the corresponding average values ​​for the time series from 1966 to 2015 and also exceeded the heat wave of summer 2003 with a probability of 20 percent . In this context, the existing uncertainties with regard to the available data are mentioned, which currently make reliable temperature reconstructions for anomalies that have occurred at short notice during the last millennium even more difficult.

The weather constellation in 1540 records a paradoxical situation, as this exceptional year occurred during the so-called Little Ice Age (roughly from the early 15th to the middle of the 19th century). The question of various studies, however, rather aims at whether this singular event could be a “blueprint” for the future climatic development in this geographical environment. According to several scientific papers, there has been a clear trend towards the formation of warm and dry climates worldwide for several decades. If the warming continues to rise, it is very likely that existing climatic zones will also disappear and that new climatic zones will be established in Central Europe - just as this became a reality almost 500 years ago, at least for a short time.

description

The Swiss historian Christian Pfister , mainly active in the research fields of environmental history and historical climatology , describes the events of 1540 in Central Europe in a newspaper interview as follows:

At that time there was practically no rain for eleven months. “ The temperature was five to seven degrees above the normal values ​​of the 20th century, and in midsummer the temperature must have risen above forty degrees. Countless forest areas in Europe went up in flames, acrid smoke clouded the sunlight, not a single thunderstorm was registered in the entire summer of 1540 . As early as May the water was running out , wells and springs fell dry, the mills stood still, the people were starving, the cattle were slaughtered . ”In Europe an estimated half a million people died in 1540, most of them from diarrheal diseases .
“ It all started in Northern Italy with a winter that felt like July. Not a drop fell from October 1539 to the beginning of April 1540. Then the drought spread to the north . ”July brought such“ scorching heat that the churches sent out prayers while the Rhine , Elbe and Seine could be waded dry-footed. Where there was still water flowing, the warm broth turned green , “fish drifted dead up with their belly. “ The level of Lake Constance fell to a record level, Lindau was even connected to the mainland. The surface water soon evaporated completely, the soil burst open, some dry cracks were so large that there was room for a foot in them . "
“ In Alsace the fruit trees bloomed again, in Lindau there was even enough for a second cherry harvest. At Lake Constance ... at some point wine was cheaper than water, and in Limoges the winemakers harvested roasted grapes from which they made sherry- like wine that ... quickly got drunk. "
In the Swiss village of Goldiwil "the desperate people even climbed 500 meters a day up and down just to draw a few vats of water from Lake Thun ."

City fires

In 1540, for a year without major war damage, there was an unusually large number of city ​​fires , which until the 19th century was only exceeded at the height of the Thirty Years' War. In Einbeck , the Krumme Wasser , a stream flowing through the city, had probably dried up. On Annentag , July 26th, a fire broke out, in the city ​​fire of Einbeck the whole city was destroyed, between 100 and 500 people died. For the year 1540, 32 more city fires were recorded on German territory. The fires took place at a time of political and religious conflicts over the Reformation . In many cases it was suspected that arson was the cause of the conflagration, allegedly motivated by anti-Protestant motives. Often, writes Pfister, Vagranten and beggars were suspected as scapegoats, there was a real arsonist paranoia. The year 1540 was also known as the “murder burner year”.

Harvest 1540

The Swedish barrel in the State Court Cellar in Würzburg was created to store the "millennium wine" from 1540.

A description is available from the city of Münden , according to which the 1540 vintage of the ducal vineyard on the Questenberg is described as "so excellent" that it was preferred to foreign wines.

In Würzburg , the so-called imperial wine was harvested in order to save at least a remnant of the harvest, which was believed to be lost, which largely consisted of shriveled and dried out berries. In retrospect, this turned out to be a fortunate circumstance: The quality of the 1540 Würzburger Stein was one of the best of the past millennium and probably comparable to that of today's Trockenbeerenauslese . The last bottle of this rarity is stored in the Würzburg Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist and can be viewed there as part of guided tours.

See also

literature

  • Rüdiger Glaser : Climate History of Central Europe - 1200 Years of Weather, Climate, Disasters , Darmstadt 2001 (3rd edition 2008), p. 108.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JA Matthews: Megadrought. Encyclopedia of Environmental Change. doi : 10.4135 / 9781446247501.n2421 .
  2. ↑ a b Oliver Wetter, Christian Pfister, Johannes P. Werner, Eduardo Zorita, Sebastian Wagner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Jürgen Herget, Uwe Grünewald, Jürg Luterbacher, Maria-Joao Alcoforado, Mariano Barriendos, Ursula Bieber, Rudolf Brázdil, Karl H Burmeister, Chantal Camenisch, Antonio Contino, Petr Dobrovolný, Rüdiger Glaser, Iso Himmelsbach, Andrea Kiss, Oldřich Kotyza, Thomas Labbé, Danuta Limanówka, Laurent Litzenburger, Øyvind Nordl, Kathleen Pribyl, Dag Retsö, Dirk Riemann, Christian Rohr, Werner Siegfried , Johan Söderberg, Jean-Laurent Spring: The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 - a worst case . (PDF) In: Climatic Change . 125, No. 3-4, August 2014, pp. 349-363. doi : 10.1007 / s10584-014-1184-2 .
  3. ↑ Ulf Büntgen, Willy Tegel, Marco Carrer, Paul J. Krusic, Michael Hayes, Jan Esper: Commentary to Wetter et al. (2014): Limited tree-ring evidence for a 1540 European 'Megadrought' . (PDF) In: Climatic Change . 131, 2015, pp. 183-190. doi : 10.1007 / s10584-015-1423-1 .
  4. ↑ Christian Pfister, Oliver Wetter, Rudolf Brázdil, Petr Dobrovolný, Rüdiger Glaser, Jürg Luterbacher, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Eduardo Zorita, Maria-Joao Alcoforado, Mariano Barriendos, Ursula Bieber, Karl H. Burmeister, Chantal Camenisch, Antonio Contino, Uwe Grünewald, Jürgen Herget, Iso Himmelsbach, Thomas Labbé, Danuta Limanówka, Laurent Litzenburger, Andrea Kiss, Oldřich Kotyza, Øyvind Nordli, Kathleen Pribyl, Dag Retsö, Dirk Riemann, Christian Rohr, Werner Siegfried, Jean-Laurent Spring, Johan Söderberg, Sebastian Wagner, Johannes P. Werner: Tree-rings and people - different views on the 1540 Megadrought. Reply to Büntgen et al. 2015 . (PDF) In: Climatic Change . 131, 2015, pp. 191-198. doi : 10.1007 / s10584-015-1429-8 .
  5. ↑ Rosanne D'Arrigo, Rob Wilson, Beate Liepert, Paolo Cherubini: On the 'Divergence Problem' in Northern Forests: A review of the tree-ring evidence and possible causes . (PDF) In: Global and Planetary Change . 60, No. 3-4, February 2008, pp. 289-305. doi : 10.1016 / j.gloplacha.2007.03.004 .
  6. ↑ Rene Orth, Martha M. Vogel, Jürg Luterbacher, Christian Pfister, Sonia I. Seneviratne: Did European temperatures in 1540 exceed present-day records? . In: Environmental Research Letters . 11, No. 11, November 2016. doi : 10.1088 / 1748-9326 / 11/11/114021 .
  7. ^ Duo Chan, Qigang Wu: Significant anthropogenic-induced changes of climate classes since 1950 . In: Nature Scientific Reports . August 5, 2015. doi : 10.1038 / srep13487 .
  8. ↑ John W. Williams, Stephen T. Jackson, John E. Kutzbach: Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD . (PDF) In: PNAS . 104, No. 14, April 2015, pp. 5738-5742. doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0606292104 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Andreas Frey: Europe's destructive millennium drought. In: Spektrum.de. August 11, 2018. Retrieved August 12, 2018 . (Essentially identical rendition of the text of August 4, 2018 from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, supplemented by some additional information and shortened by some sentences related to Switzerland)
  10. ↑ Andreas Frey: Eleven months without rain: The fear of the mega-drought of 1540 is about. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 4, 2018, accessed on August 12, 2018 (from behind Paywall).
  11. ↑ In When Europe Was Burning Pfister names August 4th as the day of the fire. Its source is incomprehensible. Probably it is a mistake, other sources cite July 26th, for example Andreas Heege : July 26th 1540, 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Martin Luther, "Hans Worst" and the city fire of Einbeck . In: Communications of the German Society for Archeology of the Middle Ages and Modern Times . tape 16 , 2005, doi : 10.11588 / dgamn.2005.0.18473 (open access). Or Cornel Zwierlein: The tamed Prometheus: Fire and Security between Early Modern Times and Modern Times . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-31708-2 , 5. Klima und Brandkonjunkturen, p. 102-110 .
  12. ↑ Christian Pfister: When Europe Was Burning: The Multi-season Mega-drought of 1540 and Arsonist Paranoia . In: Gerrit Jasper Schenk (Ed.): Historical Disaster Experiences . Springer, 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-49163-9 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-49163-9_8 .
  13. ↑ Wilhelm Lotze : History of the city of Münden and its surroundings with special emphasis on the events of the Thirty Years 'and Seven Years' War , 1878, p. 46.