Our planet offers many sources of information on how past climates influenced the environment, such as glaciers, sediments, tree rings, and pollen. But to reconstruct past climate events, researchers in the field of historical climatology go beyond these natural indicators to examine those of society: the records and everyday-life reports of people who lived in those times.
Together, these insights from the past help to make more accurate predictions about how climate change will impact our environment and society today and in the future. A new study published by Romanian researchers in Frontiers in Climate presents just such findings from historical documents dating back to 16th-century Transylvania, shedding light on the socio-economic impacts of extreme climate events from that era.
