| 1. |
- Büntgen, Ulf, et al.
(författare)
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Cooling and societal change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nature Geoscience. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 9:3, s. 231-236
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climatic changes during the first half of the Common Era have been suggested to play a role in societal reorganizations in Europe and Asia. In particular, the sixth century coincides with rising and falling civilizations, pandemics, human migration and political turmoil. Our understanding of the magnitude and spatial extent as well as the possible causes and concurrences of climate change during this period is, however, still limited. Here we use tree-ring chronologies from the Russian Altai and European Alps to reconstruct summer temperatures over the past two millennia. We find an unprecedented, long-lasting and spatially synchronized cooling following a cluster of large volcanic eruptions in 536, 540 and 547 AD, which was probably sustained by ocean and sea-ice feedbacks, as well as a solar minimum. We thus identify the interval from 536 to about 660 AD as the Late Antique Little Ice Age. Spanning most of the Northern Hemisphere, we suggest that this cold phase be considered as an additional environmental factor contributing to the establishment of the Justinian plague, transformation of the eastern Roman Empire and collapse of the Sasanian Empire, movements out of the Asian steppe and Arabian Peninsula, spread of Slavic-speaking peoples and political upheavals in China.
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| 2. |
- Büntgen, Ulf, et al.
(författare)
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Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Geoscience. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 14:4, s. 190-196
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Europe's recent summer droughts have had devastating ecological and economic consequences, but the severity and cause of these extremes remain unclear. Here we present 27,080 annually resolved and absolutely dated measurements of tree-ring stable carbon and oxygen (delta C-13 and delta O-18) isotopes from 21 living and 126 relict oaks (Quercus spp.) used to reconstruct central European summer hydroclimate from 75 bce to 2018 ce. We find that the combined inverse delta C-13 and delta O-18 values correlate with the June-August Palmer Drought Severity Index from 1901-2018 at 0.73 (P < 0.001). Pluvials around 200, 720 and 1100 ce, and droughts around 40, 590, 950 and 1510 ce and in the twenty-first century, are superimposed on a multi-millennial drying trend. Our reconstruction demonstrates that the sequence of recent European summer droughts since 2015 ce is unprecedented in the past 2,110 years. This hydroclimatic anomaly is probably caused by anthropogenic warming and associated changes in the position of the summer jet stream. European summer droughts in recent years are anomalously severe compared with those of the previous 2,000 years, according to a synthesis of annually resolved tree-ring carbon and oxygen isotope records.
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| 3. |
- Büntgen, Ulf, et al.
(författare)
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Reply to 'Limited Late Antique cooling'
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nature Geoscience. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 10:4, s. 243-243
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
- Treydte, Kerstin, et al.
(författare)
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Recent human-induced atmospheric drying across Europe unprecedented in the last 400 years
- 2024
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Ingår i: NATURE GEOSCIENCE. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 17, s. 58-65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The vapor pressure deficit reflects the difference between how much moisture the atmosphere could and actually does hold, a factor that fundamentally affects evapotranspiration, ecosystem functioning, and vegetation carbon uptake. Its spatial variability and long-term trends under natural versus human-influenced climate are poorly known despite being essential for predicting future effects on natural ecosystems and human societies such as crop yield, wildfires, and health. Here we combine regionally distinct reconstructions of pre-industrial summer vapor pressure deficit variability from Europe's largest oxygen-isotope network of tree-ring cellulose with observational records and Earth system model simulations with and without human forcing included. We demonstrate that an intensification of atmospheric drying during the recent decades across different European target regions is unprecedented in a pre-industrial context and that it is attributed to human influence with more than 98% probability. The magnitude of this trend is largest in Western and Central Europe, the Alps and Pyrenees region, and the smallest in southern Fennoscandia. In view of the extreme drought and compound events of the recent years, further atmospheric drying poses an enhanced risk to vegetation, specifically in the densely populated areas of the European temperate lowlands. The atmosphere has dried across most regions of Europe in recent decades, a trend that can be attributed primarily to human impacts, according to tree ring records spanning 400 years and Earth system model simulations.
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