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The Thirty Years' War, which took place from 1618 to 1648 CE, was an armed military conflict in Europe. It resulted from the culmination of theological differences between advocates of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as a power struggle for European political hegemony. This war brought about extensive devastation to Europe. Based on documentary evidence, this paper characterizes the climate, weather extremes, and economic and socio-political events in central Europe during that time. Natural climate forcing indicates a gradual climate deterioration during the first half of the 17th century, associated with a decrease in solar activity towards the Maunder Minimum and increased volcanic activity. The mean temperatures in central Europe from 1618 to 1648 were significantly colder than the reference period of 1961 to 1990 in winter, autumn, and annually, while precipitation and drought means did not differ significantly from the reference period. Summer temperatures, spring precipitation, and drought also exhibited significantly greater variability. As for weather extremes, particularly late winter, late spring and early autumn frosts, floods, intense rain spells, and droughts affected grain, fruit, and vine grape harvests, as well as the yields of other crops. These weather extremes contributed to various human impacts, such as food shortages (reflecting harvests and grain prices), famines, and epidemics. Ultimately, these events, along with the effects of the war, led to a decline in the population. The results obtained are discussed within the broader European context, taking into account climate, weather extremes, and socio-economic impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents opinions of several researchers regarding the drought of 1540 in Europe. It reveals that in the wake of tree-ring evidence, documentary data of W14 overstated the intensity and duration of the 1540 drought event and termed it "Megadrought" because of its extreme duration. Other topics include use of indices based on precipitation, temperature and evapotranspiration to quantify droughts, and comparing extreme values such as wet and dry conditions.

The Little Ice Age (LIA), which lasted from about 1250 to 1860 AD, was likely the coldest period of the last 8000 years. Using new documentary data and analyses of alpine glacier fluctuations, the complex transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the LIA and the ensuing high variability of seasonal temperatures, are described and interpreted for Europe. The beginning of the LIA was likely different in both hemispheres. The low temperature average of the LIA is primarily due to the high number of cold winters. Conversely many summers were warm and dry. Important triggers of the lower temperatures were, primarily, the numerous clusters of volcanic eruptions and the weak solar irradiance during the four prominent Grand Solar Minima: Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton. The drop in temperature triggered the sea-ice–albedo feedback and led to a weakening of the Atlantic overturning circulation, possibly associated with a trend towards negative North Atlantic Oscillation indices. The statistics of extreme events show a mixed picture. Correlations with forcing factors are weak, and can only be found in connection with the "Years without a Summer", which very often occurred after large volcanic eruptions. • The European Little Ice Age was mostly a winter phenomenon. • It was mainly triggered by groups of volcanic eruptions and four Grand Solar Minima. • Cold and humid summers often occurred after massive volcanic events. • Extremely cold winters were often related to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation. • Three large Alpine glacier advances occurred around 1380, 1680 and 1860 AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the topography of the city of Dunkerque (France) in 1717. The author discusses a map drawn by a topographer named Royer, which represents the urban areas and the port facilities of the city. As noted, Dunkerque is a very dynamic place at that time, and one of the most important port of Europe. The article analyzes the context when the topography was made, and the history of Royer, who was not a native from Dunkerque, and was chosen for this job for obscure reasons. The document is exposed in the city, whose inhabitants are nostalgic of that period of grandeur.

Three violent eighteenth-century storms that ravaged the North Sea area (1703), western central Europe (1739) and Portugal (1739) are investigated from the point of view of their meteorological setting, their socio-economic impact, and whether and by what means they secured an enduring place in the cultural memory. The evidence draws on individual narrative sources such as chronicles and poems, and institutional sources such as ship’s logbooks and state-organised ‘windthrow’ inventories of tree loss. Each of the three storms had socio-economic impacts that could be described as ‘war-like’ in the damage caused to buildings and the destruction of forests. The “Great Storm” of December 1703 jeopardized English naval supremacy in the War of the Spanish Succession by sinking a number of Royal Navy ships and taking the life of more than 8000 seamen. In January 1739 two similarly destructive storms swept over mainland Europe. The cultural memory of the three events here considered was however strikingly different. The sequence of storms in January 1739 though being the most protracted of the last centuries, and well-chroniceled, did not persist in the collective memories of those in France, Switzerland and elsewhere who experienced them. Likewise, the “Great Storm” was quickly forgotten on the continent, whereas its memory remained deeply rooted in England through the writings of Defoe (). In Portugal the 1739 storm won a lasting place in the country’s cultural memory owing to two poems that it inspired. Furthermore, it was recorded in the Kingdom’s official newspaper, in the astronomical prognoses and in written records of the Old Regime’s cultural elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature reconstructions from Europe for the past 500 years based on documentary and instrumental data are analysed. First, the basic documentary data sources, including information about climate and weather-related extremes, are described. Then, the standard palaeoclimatological reconstruction method adopted here is discussed with a particular application to temperature reconstructions from documentary-based proxy data. The focus is on two new reconstructions; January–April mean temperatures for Stockholm (1502–2008), based on a combination of data for the sailing season in the Stockholm harbour and instrumental temperature measurements, and monthly Central European temperature (CEuT) series (1500–2007) based on documentary-derived temperature indices of the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland combined with instrumental records from the same countries. The two series, both of which are individually discussed in greater detail in subsequent papers in this special edition, are here compared and analysed using running correlations and wavelet analysis. While the Stockholm series shows a pronounced low-frequency component, the CEuT series indicates much weaker low-frequency variations. Both series are analysed with respect to three different long-period reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and are compared with other European temperature reconstructions based on tree-rings, wine-harvest data and various climate multiproxies. Correlation coefficients between individual proxy-based series show weaker correlations compared to the instrumental data. There are also indications of temporally varying temperature cross-correlations between different areas of Europe. The two temperature reconstructions have also been compared to geographically corresponding temperature output from simulations with global and regional climate models for the past few centuries. The findings are twofold: on the one hand, the analysis reinforces the hypothesis that the index-data based CEuT reconstruction may not appropriately reflect the centennial scale variations. On the other hand, it is possible that climate models may underestimate regional decadal variability. By way of a conclusion, the results are discussed from a broader point of view and attention is drawn to some new challenges for future investigations in the historical climatology in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two European temperature reconstructions for the past half-millennium, January-to-April air temperature for Stockholm (Sweden) and seasonal temperature for a Central European region, both derived from the analysis of documentary sources and long instrumental records, are compared with the output of climate simulations with the model ECHO-G. The analysis is complemented by comparisons with the long (early)-instrumental record of Central England Temperature (CET). Both approaches to study past climates (simulations and reconstructions) are burdened with uncertainties. The main objective of this comparative analysis is to identify robust features and weaknesses in each method which may help to improve models and reconstruction methods. The results indicate a general agreement between simulations obtained with temporally changing external forcings and the reconstructed Stockholm and CET records for the multi-centennial temperature trend over the recent centuries, which is not reproduced in a control simulation. This trend is likely due to the long-term change in external forcing. Additionally, the Stockholm reconstruction and the CET record also show a clear multi-decadal warm episode peaking around AD 1730, which is absent in the simulations. Neither the reconstruction uncertainties nor the model internal climate variability can easily explain this difference. Regarding the interannual variability, the Stockholm series displays, in some periods, higher amplitudes than the simulations but these differences are within the statistical uncertainty and further decrease if output from a regional model driven by the global model is used. The long-term trend of the CET series agrees less well with the simulations. The reconstructed temperature displays, for all seasons, a smaller difference between the present climate and past centuries than is seen in the simulations. Possible reasons for these differences may be related to a limitation of the traditional ‘indexing’ technique for converting documentary evidence to temperature values to capture long-term climate changes, because the documents often reflect temperatures relative to the contemporary authors’ own perception of what constituted ‘normal’ conditions. By contrast, the amplitude of the simulated and reconstructed inter-annual variability agrees rather well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses mainly the historical climatology of Europe including the temperature in Italy in 1653, homogenization of long temperature series in Central Europe, and documentaries on natural disasters.

OBJECTIVE To examine cancer-specific and non-cancer-related mortality rates in 451 patients with T1a–bN0M0 renal cell carcinoma (RCC) treated with either radical or partial nephrectomy (RN or PN) in Europe. PATIENTS AND METHODS Between 1987 and 2007, 451 patients with T1a–bN0M0 RCC were treated for histologically confirmed RCC with RN or PN at one of seven participating European institutions. The preoperative American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA) score was available for all patients and was used to control for baseline comorbidities. The preoperative glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was estimated using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease study group equation. We used univariate and multivariate competing-risks regression analyses to test the effect of the ASA score, GFR, T stage (T1a vs T1b) and nephrectomy type (RN or PN) on RCC-specific mortality and non-RCC-related mortality. RESULTS In patients with T1a–b RCC cancer- specific mortality was unaffected by stage, nephrectomy type or GFR. Conversely, non-RCC-related mortality was strongly affected by the ASA score and GFR. Unlike in a previous report, nephrectomy type did not affect non-RCC-related mortality. This lack of significance relative to RN may stem from the relatively high rate of PN use in the present series. CONCLUSION PN or RN virtually eliminate the risk of cancer-specific mortality in patients with T1a–b RCC. Poor preoperative ASA score and impaired renal function appear to represent relative contra-indications to surgical management of T1a–b lesions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review presents European scholarship in environmental history by highlighting a limited number of works which have proved significant in their respective countries. The decade from 1994-2004 saw the development of a new scholarly network for environmental history in Europe. Members of this network have contributed to an overview about important work done in their region during the last ten years. A series of case studies on Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Czechia and Slovakia are ordered. The emerging picture shows the diversity of approaches and themes as well as the different degrees of institutional backing and involvement into teaching curricula. The introduction discusses the language challenges in Europe and some common traits in the development are sketched in the conclusions.

Focuses on a study which examined the documentary climatic evidence from six European countries namely Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, ancient Hungary, Italy and Spain during the 16th century. Documentary data of the weather in the European countries; Documentary proxy data of the countries; Conclusions and perspectives.

Provides information on a study which examined the climatic trends and anomalies in sixteenth century Europe. Documentary data on weather; Glacier fluctuations and frequency of natural hazards; Possible forcing forces which affected sixteenth-century climate; Impacts and perceptions.

Presents information on the weather condition in the 16th century Europe. Events involving the weather during that era.