The climate in south-east Moravia, Czech Republic, 1803–1830, based on daily weather records kept by the Reverend Šimon Hausner

Abstract

Abstract. Weather diaries constitute an important source of data for historical climatology, employed in the analysis of weather patterns for both the pre-instrumental and the early instrumental periods. Among the many weather diaries that exist in Europe, the daily records kept by the Reverend Šimon Hausner from Buchlovice in south-east Moravia (Czech Republic), covering the 1803–1831 period, are particularly useful. His qualitative daily weather descriptions enable the construction of series for temperature, precipitation, cloudiness, wind, and other weather phenomena (particularly thunderstorms and fogs), supplemented by a number of phenological and agricultural work records. His data related to temperature and precipitation patterns were quantified into a series of weighted temperature and precipitation indices on 7-degree scales, which were subsequently compared with standard meteorological observations from the secular meteorological station in Brno. This comparison indicates that Hausner's observations are highly reliable and confirms the importance of his data for a better understanding of the variability in the regional climate in the period of early instrumental measurements in Moravia. At the same time, it reveals the importance of weather-related documentary data in the overlap period with instrumental meteorological observations.

Weather and climate and their human impacts and responses during the Thirty Years' War in central Europe

“…As is characteristic for analysis of qualitative daily weather observations (e.g. Pfister et al, 1999;Brázdil et al, 2003Brázdil et al, , 2019Domínguez-Castro et al, 2015;Harvey-Fishenden and Macdonald, 2021), Lenke (1960) For the description of weather and climatic extremes and their adverse impacts on people and society in central Europe during the years 1618-1648, there is extensive documentary evidence available (e.g. Glaser, 2008, for Germany).…”

Evaluating the utility of qualitative data in precipitation reconstruction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

“…No single indices system is universally used with daily weather data, though most use either a 5 or 7-point scale, such as that used by (Nash et al, 2016). Indices to date are generally not used for daily weather data, although Brázdil et al (2019b) calculated daily days of rainfall for a set of weather diaries and converted these to a 7-degree indices using a regular distribution of ranked monthly totals. Since these indices rely on the concept of 'normal', they are difficult to apply to daily weather data, particularly when working with subjective personal accounts.…”

“…The system applied by Macdonald et al (2010) uses indices from 0 (no rain, hot/drought) to 5 (very wet, storm), this approach was selected for testing (Approach A). Additionally, an indice based on days of rainfall per month used by several previous studies is also considered (Ayre et al, 2015;Brázdil et al, 2019b;Lee and MacKenzie, 2010). Two versions of this are tested; one which assigned a value of 0 for very light rain or fog, and a value of 1 to any considerable rainfall (B) and a second which introduced nuance, aiming to capture the heaviness of the rainfall (i.e.…”

“…This gave three systems of indices for consideration with the weather records from London, systems: A (after Macdonald et al, 2010); B (based on days of rainfall) and C (based on days of rainfall with consideration of heaviness of rainfall). There was insufficient data for London (only 56 months) to test the impact of converting into a 7-degree classification following the methodology of Brázdil et al (2019b).…”

Documentary-based climate reconstructions in the Czech Lands 1501–2020 CE and their European context

“…To particularly describe temperature and precipitation patterns, temperature and precipitation indices were involved and used to create their longterm series using most broadly 3-or 7-point scales for the individual months (Pfister, 1992) but also other degree scales (see Nash et al, 2021, for an overview). Many temperatureprecipitation index series have been published in Europe, such as those for Switzerland (Pfister, 1988(Pfister, , 1999, the central part of European Russia (Lyakhov, 1992), central Europe (Glaser et al, 1999), the Low Countries (Shabalova and van Engelen, 2003; van Engelen et al, 2009), Germany (Glaser, 2008), the Mediterranean (Camuffo et al, 2010), Burgundian Low Countries (Camenisch, 2015), Gdansk, Poland (Filipiak et al, 2019), Buchlovice, Czech Lands (Brázdil et al, 2019b), Sweden (Retsö and Söderberg, 2020), western and central Europe (Pfister and Wanner, 2021), and others.…”