Ulf Büntgen et al., Science (13 January 2011), 2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility

Published Online 13 January 2011
< Science Express Index
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1197175

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2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility

1. Ulf Büntgen¹,²,*, 
2. Willy Tegel³, 
3. Kurt Nicolussi⁴, 
4. Michael McCormick⁵, 
5. David Frank¹,², 
6. Valerie Trouet¹,⁶,
7. Jed O. Kaplan⁷, 
8. Franz Herzig⁸, 
9. Karl-Uwe Heussner⁹, 
10. Heinz Wanner², 
11. Jürg Luterbacher¹⁰ and 
12. Jan Esper¹¹

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland.
2. ²Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
3. ³Institute for Forest Growth, University of Freiburg, 79085 Freiburg, Germany.
4. ⁴Institute of Geography, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
5. ⁵Department of History, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
6. ⁶Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
7. ⁷Environmental Engineering Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
8. ⁸Bavarian State Department for Cultural Heritage, 86672 Thierhaupten, Germany.
9. ⁹German Archaeological Institute, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
10. ¹⁰Department of Geography, Justus Liebig University, 35390 Giessen, Germany.
11. ¹¹Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55128 Mainz, Germany.

1. *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: buentgen@wsl.ch

ABSTRACT

Climate variations have influenced the agricultural productivity, health risk, and conflict level of preindustrial societies. Discrimination between environmental and anthropogenic impacts on past civilizations, however, remains difficult because of the paucity of high-resolution palaeoclimatic evidence. Here, we present tree ring–based reconstructions of Central European summer precipitation and temperature variability over the past 2500 years. Recent warming is unprecedented, but modern hydroclimatic variations may have at times been exceeded in magnitude and duration. Wet and warm summers occurred during periods of Roman and medieval prosperity. Increased climate variability from ~AD 250 to 600 coincided with the demise of the Western Roman Empire and the turmoil of the Migration Period. Historical circumstances may challenge recent political and fiscal reluctance to mitigate projected climate change.

Link:  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/01/12/science.1197175.abstract