The declining trend also continued after the recovery of agriculture after 1440. We know that the first two decades of the 14th century were wetter, windier and climatically more unstable than before. However, a long term declining trend may have already started before the Black Death. The abandoned farmland acted as a significant carbon sink because trees store carbon taken from the CO2 in the air.įrom about 1350 CO2 levels in the atmosphere appear to fall following the Black Death. More trees and scrubs mean that more carbon (CO2) was taken out of the atmosphere and stored in biomass. This means ploughing of less ground, which releases greenhouse gasses (Methane and carbonates) and forest clearance was reversed. At the same time agricultural land was taken out of production in Europe because of the 25-40% decline of the European population (depending on region). Coincidence? The climate was already getting colder because the northern hemisphere was heading for the Little Ice Age. The dramatic decline of the European population caused by the Black Death coincided with a decline in global temperature. Find out more in this video lecture by Professor Bruce Campbell of Queens University Belfast. Based on comparing the chronologies of prices, wages, grain harvests and the corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climactic variations, taking into consideration dendrochronology, the Greenland ice cores it has emerged that the episodes of the Black Death coincide with depressed temperatures. Few areas escaped and by late 1350 between 30 and 40% of the European population had perished.īut what catapulted the Black Death on the world stage? Recently it has been suggested that a climatic event similar to the 536 dust veil event is responsible. It swept quickly through the continent and reached northern Scandinavia and Iceland in 1350. The Black Death spread from central Asia along trade routes and reached southern Europe in 1347. Nowhere was this more evident and visible ultimately, in the Black Death that affected, and infected, Eurasia during the 14th century. Our invisible environment of microbes has also shaped events in world history in many ways. In fact, these creatures can be regarded as the most successful living things on the planet. Germs and microbes are part of our environment. However, the arrival of the Black Death, in Europe in 1347 pushed the European population into a century-long demographic decline and caused long-term changes in economy and society. Notwithstanding these ecological calamities, the population of northern Europe was at an all time high by the second quarter of the 14th century. This episode of failed harvests and its consequences is known as “The Great Famine”. Written records from the 14th century provide accounts of severe weather in the period from 1314 to 1317, which led in turn to crop failure and famine. The cooling trend associated with the Little Ice Age progressively moved from north-west to south-east across Europe, with the Vikings in the far North experiencing the clooing first, British Isles experiencing the effects from the 1290s and the Mediterranean after 1320. This marked the transition from a “Medieval Warm Period” to the “Little Ice Age” when temperatures were on average 1.5 degrees Celsius lower than before and with greater seasonal variation. All tree ring series in northern Europe show a decline in growth rates, indicating an adverse climatic change. Environmental upheavals linked to sever climate variability characterised the period from 1300 to 1400.
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