What are contemporary and past interactions between climatic variation and human society?
Climate history and human history are usually written separately. Many historians understand history as being limited to an account of what man does to mankind. The history of climate aims at reconstructing average temperature and precipitation during the past. However, humans and their economy are rather sensitive to the frequency and severity of extremes. It means that climate reconstruction should focus upon those conditions which are known to have interfered with the routines of everyday life. Prior to the existence of a global network of cheap transportation, weather-related crop failures were the greatest risk. Industrial societies are rather sensitive to interruptions of transport lines or to drought related slow-downs of the energy or water supply. How were climate anomalies and weather disasters changing during the past millennium? Three main climatic periods are distinguished in the past millennium: Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE up to 13th century), Little Ice Age (LIA AD 1300-186
