Take the summer of 1540. It was particularly hot over all of Europe. As Dutch author Jan Buisman of the book Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen describes: "Harvest failed, drinking water was hardly available, and diseases were rampant. On top of that, there was also a mouse plague in the Netherlands. A chaplain from the Dutch province of Limburg kept a diary and described how farmers on the land fell dead as a result of the heat while they were mowing."
Many people in Amsterdam succumbed to heat stroke, heart attack or contaminated drinking water. We do not know the exact temperatures of the summer of 1540, but from the described dry rivers, many forest fires and prolonged heat and drought we can assume that these were certainly not lower than during the past summer. Many sources speak of seven months of sun-drenched, dry and hot weather.
The heat lasted so long that the year 1540 was recorded in the history books as the "Great Solar Year". Generations will continue to talk about the hottest summer ever, and for modern climatologists the summer of 1540 is still a fascinating benchmark. The following year, the summer of 1541, by the way, reverted straight back to the typical summers in Amsterdam: cold and wet.
Temperatures started to decline, and a cold wave from December 1586 to September 1587 was the first sharp fall into the "little Ice Age". In the second half of the 16th century, it got colder in Western and Central Europe. Winters were characterized by more snow and ice, often starting in November and lasting until March or April. Historical research from the The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute ('KNMI' in Dutch), based on countless sources such as diaries, city accounts and tree annual rings, show that the last quarter of the sixteenth century was probably the coldest in the last thousand years.
Hot summers of today are no indication of man-made global warming, as there have been plenty in the past that are being ignored by the inconvenient-data-deniers in order to further their agenda. Considering all data, it is instead continued global cooling and a possible Ice Age that we can expect in the near future. The hot summer of 1540 was followed by a small Ice Age; the same, or worse, may be in store for us after this period of relative warming...Read The Full Article Here>>>...
