Clues contained in tree rings have identified mid-14th-century volcanic activity as the first domino to fall in a sequence that led to the devastation of the Black Death in Europe.
Three consecutive years of drought contributed to the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’, a pivotal moment in the history of Roman Britain, a new Cambridge-led study reveals. Researchers argue that Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of famine and societal breakdown caused by an extreme period of drought to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in 367 CE. While Rome eventually restored order, some historians argue that the province never fully recovered.
Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period.
Why did professional skateboarding arise in southern California in the 1970s? Was it a coincidence, or was it a perfect storm of multiple factors?
The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research.
Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.
Climate change is causing plants in the UK to flower a month earlier on average, which could have profound consequences for wildlife, agriculture and gardeners.
The first double-blind experiment analysing the role of human decision-making in climate reconstructions has found that it can lead to substantially different results.
Recent summer droughts in Europe are far more severe than anything in the past 2,100 years, according to a new study.
Researchers have shown that over the past two thousand years, volcanoes have played a larger role in natural temperature variability than previously thought, and their climatic effects may have contributed to past societal and economic change.
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