TY - GEN A1 - Pfister, Christian A1 - Wetter, Oliver A1 - Brázdil, Rudolf A1 - Dobrovolný, Petr A1 - Glaser, Rüdiger A1 - Luterbacher, Jürg A1 - Seneviratne, Sonia I. A1 - Zorita, Eduardo A1 - Alcoforado, Maria João A1 - Barriendos, Mariano A1 - Bieber, Ursula A1 - Burmeister, Karl H. A1 - Camenisch, Chantal A1 - Contino, Antonio A1 - Grünewald, Uwe A1 - Herget, Jürgen A1 - Himmelsbach, Iso A1 - Labbé, Thomas A1 - Limanówka, Danuta A1 - Litzenburger, Laurent A1 - Kiss, Andrea A1 - Kotyza, Oldřich A1 - Nordl, Øyvind A1 - Pribyl, Kathleen A1 - Retsö, Dag A1 - Riemann, Dirk A1 - Rohr, Christian A1 - Siegfried, Werner A1 - Spring, Jean-Laurent A1 - Söderberg, Johan A1 - Wagner, Sebastian A1 - Werner, Johannes P. T1 - Tree-rings and people – different views on the 1540 Megadrought. Reply to Büntgen et al. 2015 T2 - Climatic change Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1429-8 SN - 0165-0009 SN - 1573-1480 VL - 131 IS - 2 SP - 191 EP - 198 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Wetter, Oliver A1 - Pfister, Christian A1 - Werner, Johannes P. A1 - Zorita, Eduardo A1 - Wagner, Sebastian A1 - Seneviratne, Sonia I. A1 - Herget, Jürgen A1 - Grünewald, Uwe A1 - Luterbacher, Jürg A1 - Alcoforado, Maria João A1 - Barriendos, Mariano A1 - Bieber, Ursula A1 - Brázdil, Rudolf A1 - Burmeister, Karl H. A1 - Camenisch, Chantal A1 - Contino, Antonio A1 - Dobrovolný, Petr A1 - Glaser, Rüdiger A1 - Himmelsbach, Iso A1 - Kiss, Andrea A1 - Kotyza, Oldřich A1 - Labbé, Thomas A1 - Limanówka, Danuta A1 - Litzenburger, Laurent A1 - Nordl, Øyvind A1 - Pribyl, Kathleen A1 - Retsö, Dag A1 - Riemann, Dirk A1 - Rohr, Christian A1 - Siegfried, Werner A1 - Söderberg, Johan A1 - Spring, Jean-Laurent T1 - The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 – a worst case T2 - Climatic change N2 - 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. Y1 - 2014 UR - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-014-1184-2#page-1 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1184-2 SN - 1573-1480 SN - 0165-0009 VL - 125 IS - 3-4 SP - 349 EP - 363 ER -