Seasonal Temperature and Precipitation Fluctuations in Selected Parts of Europe During the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The article in hand presents a comparative analysis of unweighted thermic and hygric index series of different European regions (northern Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, northern Italy, ancient Hungary, Poland and Spain). Besides methodological aspects about the formation of indices, especially the progress as well as the question of similarity development of these series in the 16th century are discussed and shown on the balance sheet. It becomes evident that with respect to the temperature on the level of unweighted indices the European regions of Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland are very similar during all seasons. In winter and summer these correlations are especially evident, during the transitional seasons they are smaller. Larger differences exist between the central European core region and the adjacent areas of research. In principle, the hygric differences are larger than the thermic ones.

In the course of the sixteenth century marked cooling phases occurred during all seasons with increasing accentuation. These phases were typical for the climate of the Little Ice Age. In addition to this long-term analysis, some outstanding years of extreme weather like those of 1540, 1573 and 1587 are presented, in the course of which questions of climatic impact are included. Finally, recent instrumental data was used to conduct an analysis that compared the similarities between the respective regions and the similarities between the empirical data and indices. On the one hand, this confirmed the spatial pattern, on the other hand the usability of the indices.