Heat year 1540
Europe's biggest natural disastermirror online,by Axel BojanowskiUpdated on 07/15/2014Eleven months of hardly any rain and extreme heat: More than 300 chronicles from all over Europe reveal the gruesome details of a gigantic catastrophe in 1540. And they show that the disaster can happen again.
Nothing had hinted at the catastrophe. The climate had recovered by the beginning of the 16th century, mild and rainy decades meant that mostly lush harvests thrived in Europe, and the population increased rapidly. Medicine, art and science flourished, and the Renaissance finally found its way north of the Alps.
The year 1539 ended with a stormy, mild westerly wind. It rained a lot in December, people fled to their homes. Little did they know how valuable the precipitation was soon to become.In January 1540, a dry phase began, the likes of which Central Europe has not experienced in living memory, according to scientists who have been able to collect a huge archive of weather data. For eleven months there was hardly any precipitation, the researchers speak of a "mega drought".
The year broke all records: Contrary to previous estimates by climate researchers, the summer of 2003 is not the hottest known - 1540 exceeded it by far, writes the international research group led by Oliver Wetter from the University of Bern in the journal "Climate Change".
The unnoticed foreplay
The experts have discovered that climate models cannot represent such extreme phases of the weather. The annual rings of trees are also not indicators - because heat stress stops plant growth. The 32-strong research team has now brought together data from more than 300 chronicles from all over Europe, such as records from farmers, churches or lock keepers - they reveal Europe's largest natural disaster .
The fact that the millennium disaster was already gaining momentum in 1539 went unnoticed north of the Alps. In Spain , people have been holding prayer processions for rain since October. And in winter it was dry and warm in Italy "like in July," according to a weather chronicle. Meteorologists now know that drought in the south is often the harbinger of persistent heat in the north of the continent.
In January, the drought came in handy, neither ice nor snow affect everyday life. However, a fatal meteorological dichotomy became established: While Russia complained about persistent snow and floods of rain in the spring, Central Europeans were surprised about the continuous sunshine and starry nights. "It only rained three days in March," noted winemaker Hans Stolz in Alsace.
Collapse at the vineyard
The ground dried out and in many places it broke like crispbread. Cracks were so deep that people could dangle their feet in them, one chronicle said. What dry soil can trigger has been well known since 2003: Because no water can evaporate, which would consume heat, the air continues to heat up. "This feedback stabilized the heat wave of 1540," reports Sonia Seneviratne from ETH Zurich.
The sunny weather led to catastrophe in Central Europe. At least three times as many days as usual were more than 30 degrees in 1540. The animals were the first to be hit, and many died of thirst or heat stroke. Countless people collapsed while working in fields or vineyards. Tensions escalated into persecutions and executions. People barricaded themselves for fear of violence. The total number of deaths remains unclear, says Rüdiger Glaser from the University of Freiburg.
A comparison suggests the worst: In the hot summer of 2003, despite modern civilization, an estimated 70,000 people died in Central Europe due to the weather. The heat of 2003 was previously thought to be the result of partly man-made global warming. But it's probably not that simple: the fact that the heat was even worse in 1540 without the artificially intensified greenhouse effect puts the assessment of human influence on the weather in 2003 into perspective, says Glaser.
On foot through the Rhine
In the summer of 1540, people were increasingly desperate to find drinking water. Even a meter and a half under some riverbeds in Switzerland, "not a drop" was found, as the chronicler Hans Salat noted. Wells and springs that had never run dry before lay fallow. The others were strictly guarded and only served when the bell rang. Contaminated water caused thousands to die from dysentery, an inflammation of the colon.
The level of Lake Constance dropped so low that the island of Lindau was connected to the mainland in the summer of 1540, which otherwise only happens in winter at most, when the precipitation remains as snow in the mountains and flows slowly into the lake. "The lake was so small," chroniclers wondered.
Streams dried up, rivers got narrower and narrower. Even large rivers such as the Elbe , Rhine and Seine "were so small that you could walk through them", contemporary witnesses noted. While about half the usual amount of water flowed through the Elbe in the so-called summer of the century 2003, in 1540 it would have been just a tenth. "A record event," state the researchers.
Europe shrouded in smoke
There was not a whole day of rain between February and the end of September, wrote Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich in 1540. In Franconia , farmers only registered raindrops on 19 days up to August. According to Christian Pfister from the University of Bern, for the whole of 1540 there was just a third of the average rainfall in Central Europe. "The first longer cast was not made until 1541."
The harvest withered. "Prices for flour and bread went through the roof," write the scientists. Already at the beginning of August, the trees lost their dust-dry leaves, "as if it were already autumn," wrote a chronicler from Ulm .
Then came the fire. The dry ground caught fire, forest and bush fires raged across the country - and they crept into the towns, which were closely built with half-timbered houses. More communities than at any other time during peacetime in the past millennium have been destroyed by flames, reports Pfister. For weeks, gray smoke shrouded the continent, behind which the sun and moon almost disappeared as pale red glimmers.
What if it repeats itself?
What happens if the weather of 1540 repeats itself? "The consequences would be dramatic," warns Pfister. A mass death of animals is to be expected, cooling water for nuclear power plants would become scarce, the transport of goods across rivers would largely come to a standstill, and the consequences for human health can only be speculated on.
"The catastrophe of 1540 should be a reminder of what can happen," says Pfister. Nobody is prepared for such an extreme case. "I hope we never have to experience anything like this." However, Glaser points out that the man-made greenhouse effect increases the likelihood of severe heat waves.
It remains questionable whether warnings could be given in good time - the causes are largely unclear: the weather development in 1540 can at best be speculated on, says Sonia Seneviratne. Even a spring drought is only suitable as an indicator to a limited extent: in 2011, spring in Central Europe was as dry as in 2003, without the drought extending into summer.
The millennium wine
There was only one consolation for the catastrophe of 1540. The heat created a millennium wine with an extremely high sugar content - "it looks like gold in the glass," enthused one chronicler. Swedes , who occupied Würzburg in 1631, searched in vain for the wine - the barrels had been walled in as a precaution. As late as the 19th century, an English trader bought a few barrels at auction.
https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/klimawandel/id_70084656/hitze-jahr-1540-europas-groesste-naturkatastrophe-.htmlThe last bottles are now in the wine museum in Speyer . In the 1960s, a chosen few tasted the drink. There were sublime moments, reports Rüdiger Glaser: For a moment, the wine on the tongue gave a glimpse of the "unique spirit". Then it turned into vinegar.
