St Andrews Researcher, Dr Rob
Wilson (Senior Lecturer, Department
of Earth and Environment Sciences), is involved in an international
collaboration led by Professor
Edward Cook at Columbia University using
tree rings to produce a new paleoclimate atlas of past European drought.
To date, the long history of severe droughts across Europe and the
Mediterranean has largely been told through historical documents and ancient
journals, each chronicling the impact in a geographically restricted area. Now,
for the first time, an atlas, based on tree-ring data, maps the reach and
severity of dry and wet periods across Europe and parts of North Africa and the
Middle East over the past 2,000 years.
This new data-set for Europe will complement two previous drought
atlases covering North
America and Asia allowing scientists to pinpoint causes of drought and
extreme rainfall in the past and identify patterns that could lead to better
climate model projections for the future. The new atlas could also improve
understanding of climate phenomena like the Atlantic
Multi-decadal Oscillation, a variation in North Atlantic sea-surface
temperatures that hasn’t been tracked long enough to tell if it is a transitory
event, forced by human intervention in the climate system, or a natural
long-term oscillation.
The importance of understanding past climate change and its impact on
human society cannot be underestimated.
For example, an unusually cold winter and spring are often blamed for the
1740-1741
famine in Ireland. The Old World Drought Atlas points to another
contributor: rainfall well below normal during the spring and summer of 1741.
The atlas shows how the drought spread across Ireland, England and Wales.
The atlas also tracks the reach of the great
European famine of 1315-1317, when historical documents describe how
excessive precipitation across much of the continent made growing food nearly
impossible. The atlas tracks the hydroclimate across Europe and shows its
yearly progressions from 1314 to 1317 in detail, including highlighting drier
conditions in southern Italy, which largely escaped the crisis.
More information on The University of St Andrews Tree-Ring Laboratory
can be found here: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rjsw/TRL/
Research Publication: Cook et
al. (2015). Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era. Science
Advances. 1 (11). e1500561. DOI:
10.1126/sciadv.1500561
