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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Jeff D. says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:51 am
“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.”
944-908=36, 1007-36=971.
And you know what that means? That means Leif Ericsson was one year of age and so, I conclude, with reasonably accurate deductive capabilities, that he was one year closer to discover North America by ways of Newfoundland.
But, of course, Al-Sharif al-Radi, a descendent to the Prophet Muhammad had his one year birthday too that very same year, so I guess I could be seeing a different pattern completely.
:p
The oldest climatological + meteorological observations are referred to in: Fernand Braudel,
the greatest Frencg historian of the world in “Memories and the Mediterranean”: Quoting
a (600 BC) conversation of the Pharao with Solon (Ruler of Greece):
The climate
…[is not a hockey stick but] …occurs in century long waves, climate waves, dry and cold, moist
and warm…a continuous temperature up and down on MULTIPLE_CENTENNIAL scale….
[as the past millenium also shows: MWP to LIA – CWP -21.Cty) a natural up and down…..
further,
on decadal scale, there is the changing of the prevalent air currents from North or South….
……. Here we have climate knowledge from over 2,500 years before. The only one who
disregards historical knowledge is the Hockeystick-Mann and his CAGW-scientific dwarfs….
JS
Records in the 9th and 10th centuries (the 2nd and 3rd nominal Islamic, not 3rd and 4th), would have been written by Christian, Persian and Jewish Syriacs. Apart from the Persians they were Chaldeans and Assyrians, ethnically Semitic people but not Arabs. The intelligentsia in early Islam were the same groups of Persians, Jews, and Christians who were the local intelligentsia when greater Syria was still a Byzantine province.
The reason the 9th-12th centuries were the Islamic “golden age” is because it took 300 years for Islam to finally stamp out original thinking. It’s actually likely that the earliest “Islamic” rulers were Nestorian Christians because Islam, as such, doesn’t appear in the historical record until the early 8th century, about 100 years after Muhammad purportedly died.
I write “purportedly” because Muhammad has no historical presence, either. Contemporaneous writers are completely silent about him, as they are about Islam.
Latitude says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:45 am
They found these manuscripts in the glove box of a 1010 Ford Explorer………….
C’mon, everyone knows they drive nothing but Toyota pickups over there! 🙂
If our whole life was lived for one week, we would have trouble seeing the pattern from Summer to Winter and another Summer coming again. On the other hand, if we lived for thousands of years, we would see other patterns to climate that we don’t see, because our lives are too short.
Ray says:
February 27, 2012 at 11:21 am
“I bet we can guess the date when that happened… 2003 maybe?”
no 1258ad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_%281258%29
Gee this is a step forward. Historical records like the “Froste Faires” on the Thames were not embraced as a record of Little Ice Age’s existence. It was papered over like the MWP to make the ‘hockey stick” run straight and true until 1980s.
kellyb says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:05 pm
It’s worst then you though…
“Pillaging 7000 Years Of Iraq History No Accident”
http://www.rense.com/general37/sack.htm
People underestimate the wealth of historical artifacts and records that were present in Iraq before the US invasion. There was no WMD but there was a great wealth of culture that is now definitively gone.
How quickly will the AGW crowd show that these ancient manuscripts only show the historical context of local weather and not global climate?
Bloke down the pub says:
February 27, 2012 at 10:54 am “…Did they find any mention of WMD?…” They haven’t translated the diaries and other writings from Damascus yet.
Ray says:
February 27, 2012 at 2:56 pm
It’s worst then you though…
“Pillaging 7000 Years Of Iraq History No Accident”
http://www.rense.com/general37/sack.htm
—-snipped from link—-
Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
————————-
agenda driven reporting ?
Curiously, 891 AD was also the year al-Ya’qubi wrote in another document that Baghdad announced plans to use Windmills and Algae to help power itself into the next millennium.
“In 891 AD Berber geographer al-Ya’qubi wrote that the city had no rival in the world.”
Anyone seriously interested in historic records of climate should consult the Late, Great, Jean Grove’s “The Little Ice Age”. Mine is the first edition (Routledge 1988), but there is a 2nd. It is 498 pages long and meticulously documents all of the sources available to her at the time of writing.
From memory, for example, she draws on historic records including Scandinavian tax records and tithes (taxmen always write stuff down) showing good and bad harvests, crop failures etc. Scandinavia is a good source because it wasn’t repeatedly invaded and pillaged, so quite a lot of stuff is preserved. Another source is French grape harvest dates. Grapes require a set total number of sunshine hours before they ripen, so harvest date is a useful proxy.
She also covers non-European/North American sources where available. Everything is fully referenced, so her books are an excellent entry into the literature.
If I remember my studies in archaeology at one time Mesopotamia were like Egypt, growing grains.
Egypt was thought to be the granary of the world. Rarely did it rain, and they were dependent on the floods that came down the Nile, to irrigate like Mesopotamia did. Somewhere along the line
they were invaded and the irrigation canals destroyed, but can’t remember when. Think it was
BCE. But the mini ice age of the 14th Century to mid 1850 in UK, stopped grape or vine growing.
But they turned the grape presses into the first printing presses. I didn’t know that these climatic events also effected agriculture and animal husbandry in the middle east though.
Here is two lists of historical weather events covering nearly the last 2 000 years.
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/climatehistory.pdf
I was looking forward to reading a few original quotes related to weather and climate direct from these ancient Arabic texts.
All we have are quotes from researchers. Meh!
sHx, but – these ancient texts prove one thing, it has happened before, weather patterns, LOL
kellyb says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:55 pm
—-snipped from link—- Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
————————-
agenda driven reporting ?
Oh, no! Not Socialists! Well, at least they’re honest and don’t call themselves Progressives or Neoconservatives or, heaven forbid, Rockefeller Republicans. 😉
http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/articles/54/attachments/Gusterson_Universities_and_the_Costs_of_the_Iraq_Wars-2.pdf
Somehow, I don’t have any difficulty in imagining a brain drain in the circumstances.
Hector Pascal said @ur momisugly February 27, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Not sunshine hours, Growing Degree Days.
From the Wikibloodypedia:
Growing degree days are only an approximate guide for grapes (and other crops). Drought, pestilence and disease all restrict plant development as do days when the temperatures rise above the plants’ upper threshold for growth. These days we use bunch thinning and leafing to alter the rate of ripening and it’s not at all clear that these techniques were not used in the past. There is also considerable competition for labour at grape harvest in a peasant community and likely harvesting staple crops would have taken precedence over luxury goods.
The study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate is called phenology.
Hubert Lamb’s books Climate, History and the Modern World and Climate Present Past and Future are well worth reading if you’re into the history of climate.
@The Pompous Git says:
Fair enough PG, I stand corrected, thanks. My CYA was that it was from memory, and it’s been more than 10 years since I read it. Lamb noted.
BTW, Grove goes back a lot further than the LIA where sources allow.
I am a touch surprised that learned posters have not quoted from Jo Nova. Go to http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12-chinese-tree-ring-study-shows etc. A fascinating study of tibetan tree rings covering 2485 years with interesting comments on the methodology and significance. I look foreword to reading comments/critiques o experts in this field. Cheers from soggy Sydney.http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-shows-shows-sun-controls-climate-temps-will-cool-til-2068/
Hector Pascal said @ur momisugly February 27, 2012 at 6:55 pm
And thank you for the referral to Groves 🙂 So much to read and and so little time…
Evan Thomas said @ur momisugly February 27, 2012 at 7:40 pm
Thanks Evan; I’d forgotten about that post. Anyone else notice that there have been a lot more papers worth reading the last six months, or so? Your first link’s a dud BTW. And Jo kindly puts a tinyURL at the bottom of the post: http://tinyurl.com/c2f7cs4
I’m not an expert on treerings, so I will refrain from saying anything other than it certainly looks intriguing.
“Islamic Golden Age”, PC science fiction!
One of the great achievements of Sadaam’s fall was the immediate restoration of much of the marshland he dried up to fight rebellion:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/martyrs-of-the-iraqi-marshes-1673421.html
–reversing one of the worst ecological catastrophes of all time.
And don’t forget, the B52 bombing of the first gulf war shook the ground and its archeological treasures worse than the bombardment of the second. It was the museums that suffered. –AGF