Before the so called "anthropocene" caused current global warming there was the Medieval Warm Period (from about 950-1250 AD/CE) at a considerably lower world population!
Anthropocene is obscene in the context of global warming and climate change (unless you mean that 9 billion humans at body temperature of 36 degrees Celsius and their activities warm up the Earth, but not the atmospheric trace gas CO2)!
Notice that the researchers of the Technische Universitaet Wien also mention low solar activity in the 1330-1340s! What if the sun and it's solar activity and cycles is the major cause for warm periods on Earth?
Very strange, this research does not seem to discuss the relation between these catastrophic floods and the Medieval Warm Period. A very curious omission!
Apparently, we still know little about catastrophic weather or climate events in the past due to lack of records, research activity etc. Thus, the common hysteria and alarmism about current adverse weather events is more like medieval superstition and propaganda!
"In the town of Göttingen, Germany, sits a small parish of stone and red brick. Inscribed on a cross within, a son mourns the loss of his father, Hermann, who drowned in a flood in 1342. Known as the Magdalene flood, the deadly deluge was one of the greatest natural disasters to hit Europe in the past 1000 years.
Despite the devastation, historical records of the flood are scarce. The inscription on the Göttingen cross is the only known text to name a victim. Now, after years of scrubbing archives, researchers are painting a much more complete, and even more devastating, picture of catastrophic weather from this era. In a study published this month in Nature, scientists report evidence of about 16 cascading floods that wreaked havoc across Europe between late 1341 and 1343—the largest number of back-to-back flooding events documented in the past 700 years. ..."
"... Thousands dead, multiannual crop failures
More than a thousand entries from contemporary sources were analyzed to study the impact of the floods of this period. ... The historical records present a dramatic picture: “Many thousands of people died in the floods, from hunger and disease,” ...
Possible Causes of the Unusual Cluster
1342 was the year with the highest number of extreme flood events in the last 700 years, and 1343 is a close third. This cluster was no coincidence: The team found several possible factors that could have contributed to this extraordinary series of floods. Around 1340 and 1341, an unusually high number of volcanic eruptions occurred, including the Hekla eruption in Iceland. Sulfur-containing aerosols in the atmosphere can lead to cooling and alter large-scale circulation patterns.
At the same time, Arctic sea ice had already declined significantly since the mid-1330s, while solar activity in the 1330s-1340s was still relatively low. “The interplay of these factors could have contributed to intense low-pressure systems, prolonged rainfall, and thus the unusual series of floods.” ..." or "combined with reduced incoming solar radiation tends to lead to Northern Hemisphere near-surface air cooling". Which is it? Reduced and varying solar activity itself or reduced incoming solar radiation to blockage in the Earth's atmosphere due e.g. volcanic activity?
From the abstract:
"Europe has experienced extreme floods in recent decades. However, even larger floods are possible and must be considered in flood risk management. Their characteristics can be clarified by analysing the largest documented historical floods.
In Central Europe, the Magdalena Flood of July 1342 is usually considered the largest of the last millennium; however, knowledge of its characteristics is incomplete.
Here we show that 16 major flood events occurred across much of Europe between late 1341 and 1343. Four of these events had return periods of 500–1,000 years (the Magdalena, Bartholomew, Candlemas and Jacob Floods). Although Magdalena was thought previously to be the only extreme European flood in 1342, our new documentary dataset suggests that it formed part of a broader sequence.
The year with the greatest number of extreme floods during the past 700 years was 1342, and 1343 ranks among the top ten. This highly unusual sequence of floods had substantial socio-economic impacts, including a paradigm shift in flood mitigation measures in Europe.
A series of volcanic eruptions along with multi-annual Arctic sea ice retreat is a plausible cause of this flood sequence.
Clusters of extreme floods occurring within a few months are rarely considered in risk management. Quick and proactive risk strategies are needed that account for this eventuality."
The Flood of the Millennium That Wasn't a Single Flood (original news release) "Surprising Findings from Historical Data: the famous flood of 1342 was not an isolated event, but a series of events – providing insights for climate research and risk assessment."
Old picture of a flooding (Luzern, from e-codices)
A Late Medieval Latin chronicle entry about the series of floods of 1342–43
Fig. 2: Spatiotemporal distribution of floods and weather information in 1342 and 1343.
Fig. 3: Socio-economic impacts of floods in 1342 and 1343.
Fig. 4: Annual frequency of great and extraordinary floods in Europe in the last 700 years. [Notice the peculiar jump around 1850 that is at the end of the Little Ice Age.]
