The 1540 drought in Europe was a climatic
event
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of e ...
in Europe. In various
palaeoclimatic
Paleoclimatology (British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of Earth's history, the reconstruction of ancient climate is important to ...
analyses the temperature and precipitation regimes were reconstructed and compared to present-day conditions.
On the basis of historical records Wetter et al. (2014) derived that during an eleven-month period there was little rain in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, possibly qualifying as a
megadrought
A megadrought (or mega-drought) is a prolonged drought lasting two decades or longer. Past megadroughts have been associated with persistent multiyear La Niña conditions (cooler than normal water temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific Oc ...
. These conclusions however were questioned by Büntgen et al. (2015) on the basis of additional data (
tree rings).
Orth et al. (2016) concluded that in summer 1540 the mean temperature was above the 1966–2015 mean and with a probability of 20% exceeded that of the
2003 summer.
Description
The Swiss historian
Christian Pfister
Christian Pfister, name sometimes given as Chrétien Pfister (13 February 1857 in Beblenheim – 16 May 1933 in Beblenheim) was a French historian. He was the author of numerous writings associated with Alsace and Lorraine.
He received his ...
described the events of 1540 in a newspaper interview:
From the city of Münden there is a description of how in the year 1540 the ducal wine from the vineyard at was "so excellent" that it was preferred to foreign wine.
[ Wilhelm Lotze]
''Geschichte der Stadt Münden nebst Umgebung mit besonderer Hervorhebung der Begebenheiten des dreißigjährigen und siebenjährigen Krieges''
1878, p. 46.
In the Swiss village of , "desperate people went over 500 m up and down in elevation every day, only to fill a few barrels of water in
Lake Thun
Lake Thun (german: Thunersee) is an Alpine lake in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland named after the city of Thun, on its northern shore. At in surface area, it is the largest Swiss lake entirely within a single canton.
The lake was created af ...
".
See also
*
2022 European drought
References
Literature
*
External links
*
*
* Zeitungsartikel hinter Paywall bzw. in der Print-Ausgabe 3.8.2018 Seite 16
*
{{Authority control
Weather events in Europe
1540
History of Central Europe
Droughts in Europe