Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Megadrought" in English language version.
Consequently, despite considerable limitations of the proxy evidence, to date it does support the idea that, during medieval times, the global hydroclimate tended towards what we would now call a La Niña-like state.
New findings suggest that a decades-long drought at about the time the kingdom began fading away in the 14th century may have been a major culprit. Evidence for a megadrought comes from centuries-old conifers that survived the Angkor era.
Marine coral records from the core ENSO region of the tropical Pacific also support the concept of decadal and longer ENSO variability during the last millennium (Cobb et al., 2003), with some indication that the MCA period experienced persistent La Niña-like SST conditions that would be drought-inducing over North America.
The new record sheds light on a drought-prone 400-year period between A.D. 900 and 1300. It is punctuated by four decades-long, regionwide megadroughts centered on the years 936, 1034, 1150 and 1253.
Although the relationship between climate and societal change is complex and not necessarily deterministic, the widespread societal changes across monsoon Asia between the mid 13th to 15th centuries, which include famines and significant political reorganization within India ([Dando, 1980], [Pant et al., 1993] and [Maharatna, 1996]), the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in China (Zhang et al., 2008); Rajarata civilization in Sri Lanka (Indrapala, 1971), and the Khmer civilization of Angkor Wat fame in Cambodia (Buckley et al., 2010), strongly suggest that the MMDs may have played a major contributing role in shaping these societal changes.
a historic atmospheric river storm slams Southern California […] the city's wettest day since December 2004
Although the relationship between climate and societal change is complex and not necessarily deterministic, the widespread societal changes across monsoon Asia between the mid 13th to 15th centuries, which include famines and significant political reorganization within India ([Dando, 1980], [Pant et al., 1993] and [Maharatna, 1996]), the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in China (Zhang et al., 2008); Rajarata civilization in Sri Lanka (Indrapala, 1971), and the Khmer civilization of Angkor Wat fame in Cambodia (Buckley et al., 2010), strongly suggest that the MMDs may have played a major contributing role in shaping these societal changes.
As well as the periodic droughts lasting decades, there was evidence that the Sahel region has undergone several droughts lasting a century or more....The most recent mega-drought was just 500 years ago, spanning 1400 to 1750 and coinciding with Europe's Little Ice Age.
In medieval times the California droughts coincided roughly with a warmer climate in Europe, which allowed the Vikings to colonize Greenland and vineyards to grow in England, and with a severe dry period in South America, which caused the collapse of that continent's most advanced pre-Inca empire, the rich and powerful state of Tiwanaku, other recent studies have found.
The evidence for the big droughts comes from an analysis of the trunks of trees that grew in the dry beds of lakes, swamps and rivers in and adjacent to the Sierra Nevada, but died when the droughts ended and the water levels rose. Immersion in water has preserved the trunks over the centuries.
This far-reaching rainfall chronology also provides the first independent confirmation of the so-called Terminal Classic drought, a megadrought some anthropologists relate to the collapse of the Mayan civilization.
New findings suggest that a decades-long drought at about the time the kingdom began fading away in the 14th century may have been a major culprit. Evidence for a megadrought comes from centuries-old conifers that survived the Angkor era.
This far-reaching rainfall chronology also provides the first independent confirmation of the so-called Terminal Classic drought, a megadrought some anthropologists relate to the collapse of the Mayan civilization.
