Burgundy’s Vineyards Haven’t Been This Hot Since the Black Death
An Anonymous Coward writes:
French vintners haven't lived through such a succession of hot weather and dry harvests since at least the time of the Black Death in the 14th century.
Weather extremes that could now be considered normal for anybody under the age of 30 are unprecedented in historical records going back to when Europe was recovering from the pandemic that eviscerated the population. That's the conclusion of researchers who examined temperature, grape harvest and wage data dating back to 1354, according to a study in the European Geosciences Union journal Climate of the Past.
"Outstanding hot and dry years in the past were outliers, while they have become the norm since the transition to rapid warming in 1988," said the authors led by Thomas Labbe. Hotter temperatures over the last three decades have resulted in Burgundy grapes being harvested on average 13 days earlier than they were over the last 664 years, they said.
Yet another parallel to the onset of the "Little Ice Age":
It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[3][4][5] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[6] to about 1850.[7][8][9]
[...]Another possibility is that there was a slowing of thermohaline circulation.[49][79][87][88] The circulation could have been interrupted by the introduction of a large amount of fresh water into the North Atlantic, possibly caused by a period of warming before the Little Ice Age known as the Medieval Warm Period.[31][89][90] There is some concern that a shutdown of thermohaline circulation could happen again as a result of the present warming period.[91][92]
Solar cycle 24 had the fewest sunspots since cycle 6 (~1810-1822)[1], and cycle 25 is predicted to be 30-50% weaker[2] than that which would be as weak as the tail end of the Maunder minimum (cycle -4, ~1700-1712). There really isn't any good data on what the sun was doing earlier than that but there are reports that the prior 50 years had almost no sunspots at all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
[2] http://www.sidc.be/silso/datafiles
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/solar-activity-forecast-for-next-decade-favorable-for-exploration
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