@misc{PfisterWetterBrazdiletal., author = {Pfister, Christian and Wetter, Oliver and Br{\´a}zdil, Rudolf and Dobrovoln{\´y}, Petr and Glaser, R{\"u}diger and Luterbacher, J{\"u}rg and Seneviratne, Sonia I. and Zorita, Eduardo and Alcoforado, Maria Jo{\~a}o and Barriendos, Mariano and Bieber, Ursula and Burmeister, Karl H. and Camenisch, Chantal and Contino, Antonio and Gr{\"u}newald, Uwe and Herget, J{\"u}rgen and Himmelsbach, Iso and Labb{\´e}, Thomas and Liman{\´o}wka, Danuta and Litzenburger, Laurent and Kiss, Andrea and Kotyza, Oldřich and Nordl, {\O}yvind and Pribyl, Kathleen and Rets{\"o}, Dag and Riemann, Dirk and Rohr, Christian and Siegfried, Werner and Spring, Jean-Laurent and S{\"o}derberg, Johan and Wagner, Sebastian and Werner, Johannes P.}, title = {Tree-rings and people - different views on the 1540 Megadrought. Reply to B{\"u}ntgen et al. 2015}, series = {Climatic change}, volume = {131}, journal = {Climatic change}, number = {2}, issn = {0165-0009}, doi = {10.1007/s10584-015-1429-8}, pages = {191 -- 198}, language = {en} } @misc{WetterPfisterWerneretal., author = {Wetter, Oliver and Pfister, Christian and Werner, Johannes P. and Zorita, Eduardo and Wagner, Sebastian and Seneviratne, Sonia I. and Herget, J{\"u}rgen and Gr{\"u}newald, Uwe and Luterbacher, J{\"u}rg and Alcoforado, Maria Jo{\~a}o and Barriendos, Mariano and Bieber, Ursula and Br{\´a}zdil, Rudolf and Burmeister, Karl H. and Camenisch, Chantal and Contino, Antonio and Dobrovoln{\´y}, Petr and Glaser, R{\"u}diger and Himmelsbach, Iso and Kiss, Andrea and Kotyza, Oldřich and Labb{\´e}, Thomas and Liman{\´o}wka, Danuta and Litzenburger, Laurent and Nordl, {\O}yvind and Pribyl, Kathleen and Rets{\"o}, Dag and Riemann, Dirk and Rohr, Christian and Siegfried, Werner and S{\"o}derberg, Johan and Spring, Jean-Laurent}, title = {The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 - a worst case}, series = {Climatic change}, volume = {125}, journal = {Climatic change}, number = {3-4}, issn = {1573-1480}, doi = {10.1007/s10584-014-1184-2}, pages = {349 -- 363}, abstract = {The heat waves of 2003 in Western Europe and 2010 in Russia, commonly labelled as rare climatic anomalies outside of previous experience, are often taken as harbingers of more frequent ex-tremes in the global warming-influenced future. However, a recent reconstruction of spring-summer temperatures for WE resulted in the likelihood of significantly higher temperatures in 1540. In order to check the plausibility of this result we investigated the severity of the 1540 drought by putting forward the argument of the known soil desiccation-temperature feedback. Based on more than 300 first-hand documentary weather report sources originating from an area of 2 to 3 million km2, we show that Europe was affected by an unprecedented 11-month-long Megadrought. The estimated number of precipitation days and precipitation amount for Central and Western Europe in 1540 is significantly lower than the 100-year minima of the in-strumental measurement period for spring, summer and autumn. This result is supported by independent documentary evidence about extremely low river flows and Europe-wide wild-, forestand settlement fires. We found that an event of this severity cannot be simulated by state-of-the-art climate models.}, language = {en} }