Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era

Cook, Edward R., Seager, Richard, Kushnir, Yochanan, Briffa, Keith, Büntgen, Ulf, Frank, David, Krusic, Paul J., Tegel, Willy, van der Schrier, Gerard, Andreu-Hayles, Laia, Baillie, Mike, Baittinger, Claudia, Bleicher, Niels, Bonde, Niels, Brown, David, Carrer, Marco, Cooper, Richard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4518-5761, Cufar, Katarina, Dittmar, Christoph, Esper, Jan, Griggs, Carol, Gunnarson, Bjorn, Gutierrez, Emilia, Haneca, Kristof, Helama, Samuli, Herzig, Franz, Heussner, Karl-Uwe, Hofmann, Jutta, Janda, Pavel, Kontic, Raymond, Kose, Nesibe, Kyncl, Tomas, Levanic, Tom, Linderholm, Hans, Manning, Sturt, Melvin, Thomas, Miles, Daniel, Neuwirth, Burkhard, Nicolussi, Kurt, Nola, Paola, Panayotov, Momchil, Popa, Lonel, Rothe, Andreas, Seftigen, Kristina, Seim, Andrea, Svarva, Helene, Svoboda, Miroslav, Thun, Terje, Timonen, Mauri, Touchan, Ramzi, Trotsiuk, Volodymyr, Trouet, Valerie, Walder, Felix, Wazny, Tomasz, Wilson, Rob and Zang, Christian (2015) Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era. Science Advances, 1 (10). ISSN 2375-2548

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Abstract

Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we have developed the “Old World Drought Atlas” (OWDA), a set of year-to-year maps of tree-ring reconstructed summer wetness and dryness over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era. The OWDA matches historical accounts of severe drought and wetness with a spatial completeness not previously available. In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes. The OWDA provides new data to determine the causes of Old World drought and wetness and attribute past climate variability to forced and/or internal variability.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: drought atlas,megadrought,dendroclimatology,tree-ring reconstruction,mediterranean drying,climate change,greenhouse gas forcing,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Science
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climate, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Geosciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Water Security Research Centre
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 10 Nov 2015 16:01
Last Modified: 14 Jun 2023 12:19
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/55068
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500561

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