Climatic impacts on early modern European grain harvest yields

<p>We assess, within a framework of consistent statistical analysis, the inter-annual temperature and hydroclimate signal on grain harvest yields across diverse environmental settings of Europe during the early modern period (<em>c</em>. 1500&#8211;1800). To this end, we consider both different grain types and various climate parameters. We go beyond previous studies by applying identical analyses to several regions, by using a larger number of grain yield and harvest records, and by employing a more extensive and diverse set of the latest generation of annually resolved palaeoclimate reconstructions and early instrumental datasets. Hitherto, regional inter-comparisons of historical climate&#8211;yield relationships have been constrained by the application of different data and statistical methods. We pay particular attention to the issue of statistical significance in the presence of strong auto-correlation in both the harvest and climate data. Our analyses also consider various seasonal targets, crop types, frequency bands, and lagged harvest responses to climate. Overall, a comparatively weak climate&#8211;yield relationship is found, which is consistent with modern observations, as opposed to a strong climate signal we previously have found embedded in early modern grain price data.</p>