1540 European drought


The 1540 drought in Europe was a climatic event in Europe. In various palaeoclimatic analyses the temperature and precipitation regimes were reconstructed and compared to present-day conditions.
On the basis of historical records Wetter et al. derived that during an eleven-month period there was little rain in Europe, possibly qualifying as a drought. These conclusions however were questioned by Büntgen et al. on the basis of additional data.
Orth et al. concluded that in summer 1540 the mean temperature was above the 1966-2015 mean and with a probability of 20% exceeded that of the 2003 summer.

Description

The Swiss historian Christian Pfister described the events of 1540 in a newspaper interview:
From the city Münden there is a description of how year 1540 of the ducal wine vineyard at was “so excellent“ that it was preferred to foreign wine.
In the Swiss village „ desperate people went over 500 m up and down in elevation every day, only to fill a few barrels of water in Lake Thun.“

Literature