From Wiley-Blackwell via Eurekalert
Ancient Arabic writings help scientists piece together past climate
Iraqi sources from 9th and 10th centuries give new meteorological insights – The team believes the sources show Iraq to have experienced a greater frequency of significant climate events and severe cold weather than today.
Ancient manuscripts written by Arabic scholars can provide valuable meteorological information to help modern scientists reconstruct the climate of the past, a new study has revealed. The research, published in Weather, analyses the writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq during the Islamic Golden Age between 816-1009 AD for evidence of abnormal weather patterns.
Reconstructing climates from the past provides historical comparison to modern weather events and valuable context for climate change. In the natural world trees, ice cores and coral provide evidence of past weather, but from human sources scientists are limited by the historical information available. Until now researchers have relied on official records detailing weather patterns including air force reports during WW2 and 18th century ship’s logs.
Now a team of Spanish scientists from the Universidad de Extremadura have turned to Arabic documentary sources from the 9th and 10th centuries (3rd and 4th in the Islamic calendar). The sources, from historians and political commentators of the era, focus on the social and religious events of the time, but do refer to abnormal weather events.
“Climate information recovered from these ancient sources mainly refers to extreme events which impacted wider society such as droughts and floods,” said lead author Dr Fernando Domínguez-Castro. “However, they also document conditions which were rarely experienced in ancient Baghdad such as hailstorms, the freezing of rivers or even cases of snow.”
Baghdad was a centre for trade, commerce and science in the ancient Islamic world. In 891 AD Berber geographer al-Ya’qubi wrote that the city had no rival in the world, with hot summers and cold winters, climatic conditions which favored strong agriculture.
While Baghdad was a cultural and scientific hub many ancient documents have been lost to a history of invasions and civil strife. However, from the surviving works of writers including al-Tabari (913 AD), Ibn al-Athir (1233 AD) and al-Suyuti (1505 AD) some meteorological information can be rescued.
When collated and analysed the manuscripts revealed an increase of cold events in the first half of the 10th century. This included a significant drop of temperatures during July 920 AD and three separate recordings of snowfall in 908, 944 and 1007. In comparison the only record of snow in modern Baghdad was in 2008, a unique experience in the living memories of Iraqis.
“These signs of a sudden cold period confirm suggestions of a temperature drop during the tenth century, immediately before the Medieval Warm Period,” said Domínguez-Castro. “We believe the drop in July 920 AD may have been linked to a great volcanic eruption but more work would be necessary to confirm this idea.”
The team believes the sources show Iraq to have experienced a greater frequency of significant climate events and severe cold weather than today. While this study focused on Iraq it demonstrates the wider potential for reconstructing the climate from an era before meteorological instruments and formal records.
“Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models,” said Domínguez-Castro. “The ability to reconstruct past climates provides us with useful historical context for understanding our own climate. We hope this potential will encourage Arabic historians and climatologists to work together to increase the climate data rescued from across the Islamic world.”
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They found these manuscripts in the glove box of a 1010 Ford Explorer………….
I think Latitude is thinking of Minnesota ballot handling procedures.
Holy Hail Batman, there was climate change before burning of fossil fuel? Anyone else notice the cycle signature in the dates of snow? 908, 944 and 1007.
Did they find any mention of WMD?
I hope this article invokes the thought that there may be much to be found out from ancient civilisations, be they in Mexico, the Andes, Egypt, the home of Islam, ancient China, the Aborigines, the Inuit, the ancient Indians of North America etc etc.
Nobody can accuse Anthony of not drawing his readers’ attention to the widest possible range of sources of evidence! Give this man an award … oh, they did.
Has anyone checked China for records? I know that Halley’s Comet has been recorded by the Chiness going back to before 200BC. I wonder what abnormal weather – or normal weather they recorded.
This article is so Politically Correct….
“You will recall that just last year (2010) President O directed the head of NASA to focus on highlighting Muslim contributions to science.”
I feel so at peace.
Chinese have much older weather records which is why they have played us for fools on solar, wind,and other green fantasies.Obama borrowed our children’s money and gave it to China to pay for his gimmicks.
Rhys – Excellent point.
I recall reading in a book about lost languages that weather and wildlife observations made by locals (along with oral traditional narratives) are shown to be highly skilled and accurate – it was a rationale for attempting the preservation of native languages, that in losing a language, we lose all the knowledge of animal, plant, and climate knowledge that particular language speaking group had developed.
This really is an area the UN could (conceivably) play a constructive role, that is, the study, preservation, and publication of native languages and how they have and continue to track the natural world. I would be a bit surprised if the UN is actually engaged in anything like that. Just a thought.
It snows in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and the Zagros mountains most winters, so the author should have been more specific of the region. Iraq is not just some hot flat desert like some westerners imagine. It has every different type of climate and landscape.
Jeff D: No I did not think of it. I think I just assumed that being that old, the reports represented a reasonable view of reality.
It IT is interesting, now that you have brought it to attention, to note the pattern fit.
Do any of the dates match with those in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (not the only simultaneous record I’m sure)?
For instance:-
1046 And in the same year, after Candlemas, came the strong winter, with frost and with snow, and with all kinds of bad weather; so that there was no man then alive who could remember so severe a winter as this was, both through loss of men and through loss of cattle; yea, fowls and fishes through much cold and hunger perished.
1115 This year was the winter so severe, with snow and with frost, that no man who was then living ever remembered one more severe; in consequence of which there was great destruction of cattle.
1125 In this same year was so great a flood on St. Laurence’s day, that many towns and men were overwhelmed, and bridges broken down, and corn and meadows spoiled withal; and hunger and qualm in men and in cattle; and in all fruits such unseasonableness as was not known for many years before. And this same year died the Abbot John of Peterborough, on the second day before the ides of October.
I lost track of the bloggies. Congrats! Suggests that there are honest people about.
“many ancient documents have been lost to a history of invasions and civil strife”
I bet we can guess the date when that happened… 2003 maybe?
I’m more interested that the Islamic Golden Age is apparently 1,003 years in the past. My how time flies!
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram said @ur momisugly February 27, 2012 at 11:15 am
When was Baghdad in Kurdistan, or the Zagros Mountains?
The ancient Iraqis had to pay for harming mother earth. The sky dragon sent down extreme weather to hold the infestations(people) accountable for breathing, cook stoves, and building damns for water and agriculture. Only when the great sky dragon had been paid its penance could man then return to be one with nature.
Definition of nature: Whatever the eco-fascists say it is.
Ray says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:21 am
“many ancient documents have been lost to a history of invasions and civil strife”
I bet we can guess the date when that happened… 2003 maybe?
Yes Ray all of the following happened after 2003.
At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.[5][6]
It was unfortunate that Domínguez-Castro.made this statement:
““Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models,”
This approach begs for cherry picking and confirmation bias.
It would have been far better had Domínguez-Castro said:
“Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions with which to validate the results of climate models,”
We also have plenty of climate references from the extensive records of the Byzantine Empire from approx 350 AD to 1450 when Byzantium was sacked by the Ottomans-so that is verey much an adjacent area to that cited in the Spansish study. I wrote about some of that here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-%E2%80%93-history-and-reliability/
Some of the Roman climate references are fascinating. This observation from a series of cold winters -after many warm ones- around the 8th century in Byzantium (centred around Modern day Turkey)
“Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice. One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.”
So we have plenty of human observations which of course are considreed merely ‘anecdotal by climate scientists and largely dismissed.
tonyb
Ray needs to remember the destructive invasion of the Mongols, who made the West’s multiple interventions seem rather puny.
In 2008 we were told the Baghdad snow was due to global warming playing havoc with the weather. The parroted talking point in leftist echo chambers was that climate change wasn’t uniform and that as some places got warmer, some places got colder. Never mind their silly analogy supposedly applies to long-term climate but they cite that nonsense as an example to explain away the weather. So be it… but if global warming supposedly caused the 2008 Baghdad snow event – because it was the only snow event there ‘in living memory’ – why is it then, that three snow events over a thousand years ago, each one far enough apart that at the time they would also likely be the ‘only snowfall in living memory’ is indicative of the climate. This is a blatantly false argument. And aren’t we always told that weather events aren’t indicative of climate? Yet in this case, since three outnumbers one, just THREE snowfalls over a nearly 200-year period somehow validates, in the mind of warmists, the idea that is was colder than than it is now, hence global warming is true. It also flies in the face of the anecdotal evidence they routinely dismiss, as they have no issue using a once-in-70 year event as anecdotal evidence to the contrary when it loosely fits their agenda.
So, what are we to take from this? That anecdotal evidence of it snowing in Baghdad at the rate of once-in-a-lifetime over a thousand years ago is an indicator of climate change, even though there was just a once-in-a-lifetime snowfall just four years ago. And why is it in every article that flimsily links odd weather to climate change they somehow prove that the occurrence of odd weather is, in fact, not all that unusual relatively speaking. What’s even more entertaining to consider is the contortionist positions warmists must twist themselves into trying to explain away all the inconsistencies in their theory.
Wiley-Blackwell, leads to Eurekalert,
leads to AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science).
See anyone you recognize?
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/plenaries/
Theme – Flattening the World: Building a Global Knowledge Society
The 21st century is shaping up to be a challenging one. The issues that face us are many: climate change, energy, agriculture, health, water, biodiversity and ecosystems, population growth, and economic development.
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/theme/
So many warmists, so much money !
Dr Hansen is already hard at work adjusting the data.