Winter severity in Europe: The fourteenth century

Abstract

The fourteenth century is known to include a period of winter cooling in Central and Western Europe, but its timing and magnitude are not clearly established. An attempt to obtain a coherent picture from verified documentary evidence yielded 2133 records from a region covering Central Europe and Northern Italy, mostly originating from the ‘Monumenta Germaniae Historica’. Temperatures were assessed using semi-quantitative indices on the basis of proxy information on snow-cover, ice and untimely activity of vegetation. Results: A run of cold winters from 1303 to 1328 was followed by a run of ‘average’ winters up to 1354. Then winter temperatures were extremely variable up to 1375. For the rest of the century they fluctuated somewhat below the average of the twentieth century. The pattern in the first five decades is compared to that in the Late Maunder Minimum (1675–1715). The possible role of forcing factors (variations in solar output, North Atlantic Deep Water formation) is briefly discussed.