Historical climatology ‐ a state of the art review

Abstract

Documentary evidence from historical times for the pre-instrumental period is one of major sources of evidence available for the study of past climates. It complements and generally provides support for evidence available from a wide variety of natural archives (tree rings, ice cores, corals etc.). For an extensive discussion of the latter see Jones and Mann (2004). Documentary evidence is generally limited to regions with long written traditions, such as Europe (Le Roy Ladurie, 1971; Bradley and Jones, 1995; Martin-Vide and Barriendos, 1995; Pfister