the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 15 Sep 2025
15th century climate in the Czech Lands and its Central European context
Abstract. Information concerning the weather and related phenomena in the Czech Lands (recently the Czech Republic) in the 15th century may be derived from the Old Czech Annals, chronicles, letters and from the surviving accountancy records of the town of Louny. Secondary sources are only of limited use. Critical evaluation of data from such reported sources, originating almost exclusively from Bohemia (the western part of the Czech Lands), facilitates a degree of description of the course of weather and related phenomena on an annual basis, but not for all years. Records for the 1400s and 1410s are particularly poor, while better evidence appears in the 1430s and 1450s. In order to interpret the temperature and precipitation character of this century, a 3-degree scale for months and a 7-degree scale for seasons were deployed to create series of temperature and precipitation indices. These indices are relatively more frequent for winter and summer, while far fewer indices can be derived for spring and autumn. Despite their incompleteness, Czech temperature and precipitation indices accurately reflect the occurrence of significant extremes and climate anomalies in Central Europe during the 15th century. Comparison with existing proxy reconstructions and paleo-reanalysis shows that the 15th-century Czech indices provide unique information, especially about December–February temperature variability, which is not easy to obtain from the study of natural proxies.
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Status: open (until 10 Nov 2025)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3917', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Sep 2025 reply
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3917', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Oct 2025
reply
The article is very interesting and valuable, providing a lot of important information about the weather and climate in the Czech Lands in the 15th century. That is why I suggest its publication in the journal Climate of the Past; however, it still requires some corrections and clarifications.
Main weaknesses:
- In the Introduction part, I suggest including a short summary of the present state of the art knowledge about 15th-century weather and climate in the Czech Lands (now the Czech Republic).
- I suggest significantly shortening Section 2, as it is definitely too long and detailed, and is only loosely connected with the main subject of the paper, although it gives some background on the political, social and economic situation.
- The Discussion part can be improved by comparison of the presented results for Czech Lands with the available weather and climate information (many quantitative reconstructions based on both documentary evidence and natural proxies) from the neighbouring area of Poland (see Ghazi et al. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129778; Przybylak et al. 2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2389-2023, the last item is cited in the paper, only generally), because, as result from the reviewed paper as well as Luterbacher et al. (2010), both areas are very well correlated, in particular in case of winter air temperature. Also, because both areas are included in Central Europe, in the case of the ModE-RA paleoreanalysis data used in the paper. It should also be remembered that the 15th-century reconstructions from ModE-RA are entirely modelled data without any assimilation of data from this region. For Europe, only one series of data from the Low Countries (Van Engelen et al., 2003, see https://mode-ra.unibe.ch/climeapp/) was used for the period from October to March. The situation is better for the warm half-year, for which proxy data (mainly tree-ring widths) are mainly available from SW Europe and Fennoscandia; however, no data are available from Central Europe, the entire Eastern Europe, and SE Europe.
Luterbacher J., Xoplaki E., Küttel M., Zorita E., González-Rouco J. F., Jones P. D., Stössel M., Rutishauser T., Wanner H., Wibig J., Przybylak R., 2010, Climate Change in Poland in the Past Centuries and Its Relationship to European Climate: Evidence From Reconstructions and Coupled Climate Models. In: Przybylak R, Majorowicz J, Brázdil R, Kejna M (eds) The Polish Climate in the European Context: An Historical Overview, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 3-39.
Minor weaknesses
- lines 176-177 – not clear the area for which SD was calculated, Central Europe, or a smaller area encompassing only the Czech Lands?,
- lines 458-460 – I suggest rewriting these sentences slightly, taking into account the information given at the end in point 3 (Major weaknesses),
- lines 487-488 - this is a very well-known volcano eruption (Kuwae in Vanuatu), only the precise date is not established yet. The most probable date is 1452/1453 CE; however, in literature, other dates are also given, most of which fall in the 1450s. Kuwae was one of the largest eruptions in the past millennium,
- lines 492-493 - it seems that that eruption can also be attributed to the Kuwae volcano; see what Abbott et al. (2021) wrote in the Introduction part of the cited paper: ‘The large sulfate-loading eruption during the 1450s CE has most commonly been attributed to the formation of the submarine Kuwae caldera offshore of Vanuatu in the South Pacific.’
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3917-RC2
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- 1
This is a very comprehensive work that develops knowledge on a topic or area that was lacking in its entirety regarding the climate of the Late Middle Ages in Central Europe. The authors express the limitations and challenges of the availability of sources, which demonstrates their expertise and honesty. The analysis of the information obtained is optimal, and the results are integrated into the context, which the authors themselves summarize very accurately.
I have no general criticisms to raise, but only some minor details that I leave for the authors' consideration if they would introduce or consider some of the suggestions:
+ Section 3. "Documentary data." Would it be more appropriate to express this as "Documentary Sources"?
+ At various times, the difficulty in finding information to cover all the years under study within the 15th century is explained. Don't the authors consider creating groupings by 5 or 10 years to overcome this problem? At least in some cases, as a support for the annual study, continuous diagrams by groupings would perhaps provide a complementary result.
+ Fig. 2. Displaying a time axis in successive units but without maintaining its consecutive timeline of years creates problems in interpreting the information. There are jumps or gaps that cannot be perceived, and it seems to be a continuous series when in reality it is not. Wouldn't it be possible to present the information with axes that correctly visualize the chronological progression? For example, by marking the years without information with a softer colour or gray colour?, without breaking the continuity of the annual series.
+ Lines 305-320. The level of disagreement between the dendroclimatic and historical data is explained. Could this low level of consistency be the result of the different geographic locations of the two proxies? Could this be explained in the text? I know of countries where these comparisons have been attempted, but the areas where the dendroclimatic and historical data are obtained are completely different, with their own ecosystems and dynamics. Therefore, the differences are entirely logical, even considering that the objective is to assess climate variability on a broad temporal scale. I don't think these differences imply the slightest loss or relativization of the quality of the results.
+ Line 487, p. 24. A strong volcanic eruption from 1452-1453 is mentioned as "unknown," but perhaps this isn't the eruption of Mount Kuwae?