PAGEOPH, Vol. 119 (1980/81), Birkhiiuser Verlag, Basel 0033-4553/81/030628-12501.50+0.

20/0
9 1981 Birkhiiuser Verlag, Basel
Some Aspects of the Cold, Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries,
the 'Little Ice Age', and Similar Occurrences
by HUBERT H. LAMB 1
Tor Bergeron, by writing a short paper on the legend of the Fimbulvinter (1956),
revealed t hat among his many-si ded interests was the past behavi our of the climate, and
its possible i mpact s on human history. The critical aspects of the legend were quoted
from Snorre Sturluson in Gylfaginning in the Edda"
'... dd kommer den vinter som kallas firnbulvintern. Dd driver sn6n f rdn alla
vdderstreck, det er strdng kyla och bitande rind. Solen f 6rmdr intet. Tre sddana
vintrar f6ljer pd varandra och det dr ingen sommar emellan . . . '
( ' . . . t hen comes the winter t hat is called the Fi mbul winter. Then the snow drives
f r om every quarter. The cold is severe and the winds biting. The sun is powerless
against it. Three winters like this follow one after t he other and there is no summer
in bet ween. . . ' )
The quot at i on goes on to describe the wars and individual strife t hat ensued.
Bergeron and his co-aut hors suggest t hat this legend might well be a long-surviving
folk memor y in the nort hern countries about the onset of the colder climate, of which
there is much ' fossil' evidence (from glacial advances t hat left old morai nes, f r om pollen
analysis, etc.), during the last millennium before Christ. There can be little doubt t hat it
report s - with some, doubtless rough, appr oach to accur acy - a real occurrence at
some time in the past of an unbroken run of about three bad years with severe winters
and poor summers, which had very dire effects on an early popul at i on in Scandi navi a
and severely shocked the i magi nat i on of the people, because their previous experience
had not suggested t hat such a sequence was possible.
This seems to be an early exampl e of a phenomenon which has begun to at t ract
some attention in the investigation of the climatic record of mor e recent times. The
phenomenon has been called ' clustering' . I t refers t o the occurrence, in rat her close but
not necessarily unbroken succession, of groups of years with some specific similar, but
otherwise quite unusual, charact er. A short list of exampl es will show what is meant .
The list begins with a case t hat is still well r emember ed by many peopl e now living.
1) Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia and founder of the Climatic Research Unit, Norwich
UK.
Vot. 1 I9, 1980/81 Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries 6 29
Table 1
Some examples of the clustering of similar climatic events and related atmospheric circulation patterns
1. The three 'war winters', 1939-40, 1940-41 and 1941-42, with mean temperatures (December,
January and February) in central Europe (mean of De Bilt, Potsdam, Basle and Vienna) respectively
4.2 ~ 2.2 ~ and 3.4~ below the 200-year average (BAurt, 1950), causing freezing of the rivers all over
central and western Europe and accompanied by great snowstorms. Only two comparable winters,
1916-17 (-1.0 ~ and 1928-29 (-4.2~ had occurred since a group fifty years earlier in the 1890's.
2. A very similar cluster of three successive severe winters had affected particularly western Europe
in I878-79, 1879-80 and 1880-81, giving temperatures in central England of 3.0 ~ , 1.2 ~ and 1.4 ~ ,
respectively, below the 250-year average of 1701-1950 (MANLEY, 1974).
3. On a somewhat different time scale, the sequence of three 'skating Christmasses' in England with
very severe frosts beginning on, or just before, Christmas Day with a north European anticyclone
and easterly winds over the European plain in 1961, 1962 and 1963. In a moderated degree, with
snowy weather and/or a dry frost sufficient for skating between about 25 and 28 December, the
sequence was continued in 1964 and 1965. This sequence must be viewed against a background of only
seven to ten Christmasses in southern England during the first fifty years of the century which could
in any way (i.e. on the grounds of either white frost or snow cover) be classed as a 'white Christmas'.
4. A quite similar cluster of years, lasting from 1965 to 1971, in which northerly winds predominated
over the British Isles (30% of the days, whereas 10% were westerly) in the first pentad (5 days) of
January was a very marked feature at the time. No other run of years for which weather maps are
available has shown this feature or any approach to it. Over the 119 years from 1861, when the
British Isles daily weather map classification begins (LAMB, 1972a), to 1979 the predominant character
of the wind pattern over the same pentad was westerly (32%); northerly situations amounted to only
7%. In a very different cluster of years, from 1921 to 1932 inclusive, westerly situations accounted
for 73% of the days during the first pentad of January.
When we switch our at t ent i on to evidence of clustering on longer time scales, at
some point we find ourselves considering what is ordinarily t hought of as climatic
change and examai ni ng the stability and homogenei t y of each regime while it lasts. This
question is illustrated in the long recorded history of disastrous Nort h Sea storm floods
over the coastal lowlands bordering t hat sea. The over-all frequency seems to have been
highest in and ar ound the thirteenth century, when the sea level may have been a few
decimetres higher after some hundreds of years of warmer climate in many parts of the
world, and melting glaciers. The reports also strongly suggest that storminess was
increasing in the Nor t h Sea, as the warm regime broke down farther north. But on the
coasts of the sout hernmost Nort h Sea, in Fl anders and the Net herl ands, the peak
frequency of disastrous floods was in and around the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries (GoTTSCHALK, 1971, 1975, 1977): t hat is to say, in the cold climate (so-called
Little Ice Age) period, when the general sea level cannot have been high, and the
phenomenon must indicate more frequent and more severe storms in the sout hern part
of the Nort h Sea t han before and probabl y more nort herl y winds. By contrast, in the
twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - and in the fifteenth cent ury apart from a
break around 1400 to 1420 and the period after 1470 - the severe flooding incidents
were largely concent rat ed farther north, on the coasts of Friesland, nort h-west
Ger many and Denmar k.
The Nort h Sea floods on the coasts of Engl and seem on the whole to have been less
630 Hubert H. Lamb PAGEOPH,
severe t han on the cont i nent al side, t hough in Engl and also l and has been permanent l y
lost and sometimes many people have perished. The frequency on the English Nort h
Sea coast seems to show two peaks, in and around the thirteenth cent ury and between
about 1530 and 1740. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries nearl y all the serious
floods and losses of l and reported relate to the coasts around the Humber in nort hern
England. (It is not clear whether this resulted from some particularly vulnerable
format i on of the spit of l and about Spurn Head and of the coastal dunes about t hat time
or perhaps represented some strongly repetitive concent rat i on of the paths of the
storms.)
Clustering of years with exceptional ' bl ocki ng' , and repl acement of the normal l y
prevailing westerlies by meridional situations (in slightly different positions in different
years) over Europe, can be detected in the occurrence of the ten to fifteen mildest and
severest winters and warmest and coldest summers shown by the 300-year record of
t emperat ures observed in central Engl and (MANLEY, 1974). The details are given in
Tables 2 and 3. Notice the cases of opposite extremes occurri ng within a few years of
Table 2
Mean temperatures over December, January and February of the seven coldest and seven mildest winters
in central England between 1659 and 1979. (Average winter 1850-1950:4.0 ~ C)
Winter 1683-84 1739-40 1962-63 1813-14 1794-95 1694-95 1878-79
~ -1.2 -0.4 -0.3 +0.4 +0.5 +0.7 +0.7
Winter 1868-69 1833-34 1974-75 1685-68 1795-96 1733-34 1934-35
~ 6.8 6.5 6.3 6.3 6.2 6.1 6.1
The severest individual months are closely comparable: mean temperature (January in each case)
1684 and 1795 -3.0 or -3.1 ~ , 1814 -2.9 ~ , 1740 -2.8 ~ , 1963 -2.1 ~ , 1716 -2.0 ~ . Differences in the
effects of the winters concerned seem therefore to have had more to do with the length of the frost
period than with the temperature of the coldest month. Differences in the amounts of snow covering the
ground must also have been important.
Table 3
Mean temperatures over June, July and August of the fourteen hottest and fifteen coldest
central England between 1659 and 1979. (Average summer 1850-1950:15.2 ~ C)
summers in
Summer 1826 1976 1846 1781 1911 1933 1947
~ 17.6 17.5 17.1 17.0 17.0 17.0 17.0
Summer 1868 1899 1676 1975 1666 1719 1762
~ 16.9 16.9 16.8 16.8 16.7 16.7 16.7
Summer 1725 1695 1816 1860 1823 1674 1675
~ 13.1 13.2 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.7
Summer 1694 1888 1922 1812 1862 1698 1890 1920
~ 13.7 13.7 13.7 13.8 13.8 14.0 14.0 14.0
Vol. 119, 1980/81 Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries 631
each ot her , pa r t i c ul a r l y r e ma r k a b l e in t he s ucces s i ve wi nt er s 1794- 95 a nd 1 7 9 5 - 9 6
a nd t he s ucces s i ve s u mme r s o f 1674, 1675 a nd 1676.
A r el at ed a s pe c t is seen by c o mp a r i n g t he l ong r e c or ds o f s now- c ove r in t he a r e a o f
Zt i r i ch and Ber n i n Swi t z e r l a nd (PFISTER, 1978) wi t h t he t e mpe r a t ur e s in Engl and. F o r
i ns t ance, t hough t he s ever es t wi nt er i n t he 320- ye a r t e mpe r a t ur e r e c or d f or cent r al
Engl a nd wa s 1 6 8 3 - 8 4 ( DJ F Me a n - 1 . 2 ~ or 4. 9 ~ bel ow t he 1 7 0 1 - 1 9 5 0 aver age) ,
when i ce bel t s s ever al ki l omet r es wi de f or me d al ong bot h si des o f t he No r t h Sea a nd
Engl i sh Cha nne l , i n Swi t z e r l a nd t he next wi nt er , 1684- 85, when t he s now l a y f or 112
d a y s in Zt i r i ch ( c o mp a r e 1963 wi t h 86 da ys , t he l onges t dur a t i on in t he l ast hundr e d
ye a r s ) was t he mo r e out s t a ndi ng one of t he pai r . Tent at i ve ' i s o b a r i c ' ma p s f or t he
J a n u a r y s o f t hese t wo wi nt er s ar e s hown in Fi gs . 1 and 2. ( The anal ys es of t he mont hl y
ma p s r e c ons t r uc t e d f or t he J a n u a r y s and J ul ys of t he 1680' s wer e t es t ed by openi ng
pe r f or mi ng an anal ys i s o f t he s a me mont hs in t he 1880' s fi rst usi ng onl y t he s a me
a mo u r t and t ype s of i nf or ma t i on as i n t he 1680' s, a nd t hen c o mp a r i n g ma p s dr a wn
Figure 1
Tentative reconstruction of the circulation map (suggested sea level isobars) for the winter 1683-84. Note:
additional data used: monthly mean temperature for January in Central England - 3~ (7 ~ below the
modern average) and for the three winter months (December, January and February) --1.2 ~ C (5.4 o below
the modern average). Wind directions observed in London during January 1684: E: 39%, NE: 26%, N:
3%, SE: 3% W: 29%. Frost 29 days during January in London. Belts of ice some kilometres wide fringed
the Channel coasts of England and France and the coast of Holland. Traffic crossed the Zuyder Zee on the
ice and also the sound between Copenhagen and Malta6 in Sweden. Dublin, Ireland reported ' a most severe
frost'. Note: The dates on Figs. 1, 2 and 4 have been corrected to the new style (modern) calendar.
63 2 Hubert H. Lamb PAGEOPH,
Figure 2
Tentative reconstruction of the circulation map (suggested sea level isobars) for the winter 1684-85. Note:
additional data used: monthly mean temperature for January in Central England +0.5 ~ (3.5 ~ below the
modern average) and for the winter + 2.7 ~ C (1.5 o below the modern average). Wind directions observed in
London during January 1685: W: 55%, NW: 16%, N: 13% NE; 3%, E: 13%. Frost 23 days during
January in London. The month of January in England was described as ' at times as cold as any period in
the previous winter' with thick ice on the rivers in south and north, but the same month also at times
brought rain and storms of wind.
f r om act ual pr essur e dat a. ) These winters were pr oba bl y equal l ed or exceeded, by one
ot her case earlier in t he same cent ur y: this was in 1607- 08 in Engl and and nor t h- west
Eur ope, but 1613- 14 in Swi t zerl and, when t he s now on t he Swiss pl at eau about Bern
l ast ed f or mor e t han 150 days. The t hi r d of t he snowi est wi nt ers identified by PFISTER in
t he Swiss r ecor ds was 1784- 85, wi t h agai n over 150 days o f s now- cover near Bern; but
in Engl and and nor t h- west Eur ope this winter, al t hough severe, was sur passed by
1783- 84.
These cases can be expl ai ned by t he domi nance of bl ocki ng pat t er ns in whi ch t he
persi st ent col d air suppl y f r om t he nor t h ent ered Eur ope in a slightly different l ongi t ude
in nei ghbour i ng, or near l y nei ghbouri ng, year s. A slightly gr eat er shift o f a similar
meri di onal wi ndfl ow pat t er n mi ght br i ng pr edomi nant l y sout her l y wi nds i nst ead of
nor t her l y or east erl y wi nds in any par t i cul ar l ongi t ude in nei ghbour i ng years.
Thi s is pr es umabl y t he expl anat i on of t he occur r ences, not i ceabl e in Tabl es 2 and 3,
of opposi t e ext r emes within a few year s of each ot her. Ot her exampl es o f this are f ound
in t he 400- year list of dat es of openi ng of t he Baltic por t of Ri ga since 1535 (BETIN and
Vol. 119, 1980/81 Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries 633
PREOBAZENSKY, 1959). The years with least ice and with most ice (1652 and 1653,
opening dates 2nd and 3rd Febr uar y respectively; 1659, opening date 2nd May) all
occurred within the same decade. This experience was presumabl y paralleled in recent
years by the cont rast between the severe ice-winter in the Baltic in 1965-66 and
1974-75, when there was almost no ice.
The apparent increase, since about the 1960' s in the variability from year to year
and from one group of a few years to the next, and in the occurrence of many kinds of
climatic extremes, has at t ract ed notice in most parts of the world. This is illustrated here
(Fig. 3) by the distribution by decades over the last hundred years of mont hl y rainfall
OBSERVATI ONS OF MONTHLY RAI NFALLS IN THE EXTREME
(TOP AND BOTTOM) QUI NTI LES
+
i
3 6 0 0 - - - - ~
~
3500
3400
I
Z 3300
+ 8 5 + o + | o o
r - -
I '
N. Hemisphere
]
Figure 3
Distribution by decades from 1880 to 1977 of the numbers of reports of 'extreme' monthly precipitation
totals, i.e. months falling within either the driest or the wettest 20% of all occasions. The network of 73
stations used was well scattered over the northern hemisphere.
measurements in the extreme quintiles (highest and lowest 20% of all occurrences) at a
net work of over seventy stations well scattered over the nort hern hemisphere. The
frequency of very wet and ver y dry mont hs has been highest in the later nineteenth
cent ury and since 1960. It was probabl y WALL~N who first pointed out (1953) that the
st andard deviations of the seasonal means shown by the long records of t emperat ure in
Europe had varied. In particular, the variance of summer temperatures in the
over-200-year-long record for Stockholm had been greatest in periods with frequent
occurrence of meridional circulation patterns: the figures were 1.25 o C for 1770-89 and
1. 23~ for 1928-47 (the latest years covered) against 0. 94~ for 1906-25.
Correspondi ng changes are now known to have affected the winter temperatures. For
example, the st andard deviation of winter t emperat ure in central England from year to
year was 2. 26~ from 1795-1824 (a peak period) and again from 1879-98, and has
returned to a similar level from 1938, whereas from 1906 to 1935 it was only 1.45~
It is arguable, in connect i on with different impacts of climate on the biosphere and
on the human economy, how far changes of climate, such as t hat which marked out the
so-called Little Ice Age between about A.D. 1550 and 1850 as different from earlier and
later times, are best considered in terms of changes of the mean values of t emperat ure
and rainfall etc. or changes in the frequency of extremes and changes in other measures
634 Hubert H. Lamb PAGEOPH,
of variability f r om year to year. Some meteorologists have even suggested t hat the latter
was the t rue nat ure of the Little Ice Age regime, since a skewness of the t emper at ur e
distribution in t he colder mont hs of the year is associ at ed with greater deviations f r om
the l ong-t erm mean in the case of the cold extremes.
The severest shocks to the human economy come, of course, when two, three or
more years tending to the same ext reme occur in succession. A pri me exampl e is
provided by the history of the 1690' s in Scot l and when the grain harvest failed in the
upl and pari shes in all part s of the count ry in seven years out of eight f r om 1693-1700.
The crops, we are told, were blighted by easterly ' haar s ' , or sea mists; by cold, sunless,
drenching summers; by st orms; and by earl y frost s and deep snow in aut umn
(GRAHAM, 1899); and the deaths f r om fami ne exceeded those in the great plague (the
Black Deat h) in the middle ages. Such sequences of years must also be i mpor t ant in
connect i on with glacier advances. It has been noticed t hat available account s f r om t he
period of the Little Ice Age seem to i mpl y t hat most of the advances of glacier snouts
t ook place in j ust two, or three or four, disastrous periods of 10 to 15 years. And BRAY
(1971) similarly finds f r om fossil evidence in north-western Nor t h Amer i ca t hat over
hal f the glacier advances between 1580 and 1900 were concent rat ed in the years
1711-24 and 1835-49.
Dr O. Liestol of the Nor wegi an Pol ar Institute has suggested to me t hat such
sequences of j ust a few years of cold summers and severe winters may have been
sufficient to establish a long-lasting ice-cover on some small, high-level lakes, or tarns,
in the Scottish Hi ghl ands where such was observed but the wat er t emper at ur e
nowadays is as high as 8- 10~ even in a colder t han average summer (as in 1978). The
process proposed depends on abnormal l y great amount s of snow being blown into the
wat er in a cold spring and failing to mel t during an ensuing cool, cl oudy summer. I f the
following winter were severe, a thickness of ice mi ght be formed which could not be
entirely melted until one or more war mer t han average summer s returned. (This process
has been observed in wat ers on the Har danger vi dda (plateau) in Nor way. )
We know f r om the actual t her momet er records in Engl and t hat f r om spring 1690 to
aut umn 1695 inclusive there was an unbroken sequence in which every season of every
year was colder t han the 1701- 1950 average. Indeed, the sequence lasted with onl y few
breaks f r om about 1680-1700. Descriptive account s of the seasons suggest t hat there
were some part l y similar experiences in the 1650' s and in the earl y years of the cent ury
before 1620; the period pr obabl y extended back into the previous cent ury. Moreover,
there are strong indications f r om the report s of sea ice about Icel and ( KocH, 1945) and
of the cod fisheries in the nort hern seas t hat pol ar wat er f r om the East Greenl and
current had been spreading south and east over the ocean surface for a long time, until
f r om 1675- 1704 this wat er mass domi nat ed the ocean as far south as the Faer oe
Isl ands (LAMn, 1977, 1979). I n the ext reme year, 1695, the war m, saline Nor t h Atlantic
Drift wat er (and its fish stocks) seems to have di sappeared f r om the sea surface as far
east as the entire coast of Nor way and al most as far south as Shetland. With an ocean
surface between Icel and and 6 0 - 6 2 ~ t herefore as much as 5~ colder t han in the
Vol. 119, 1980/8l Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries 635
twentieth century, prevailing air temperatures in nort hern Scotland and much of
Nor way must have been lowered significantly more t han in England, where the average
for the 1690' s was 0. 8- 1. 0~ lower t han the twentieth cent ury mean.
There exist many reports of permanent snow on the tops of the highest mountains in
Scotland in those times and one or two of small, high-level lakes on which there was
always ice, ' even in the hot t est summer' (e.g. MACKENZV, 1675). These seem to require
mean t emperat ures as much as 2. 5~ below modern experience. This figure seems well
possible given the anomal y described in the ocean only 500- 800 km farther north.
Liestol' s suggestion indicates t hat in such a climate, or one approaching it, j ust a few
colder years in unbroken succession could establish a ' cake' of ice, perhaps 50 cm or
more in thickness, on the surface of some small water bodies above about 700 m above
sea level which, prot ect ed by its own high albedo, could persist for several years and
perhaps for many years.
The clustering of recurrences of similar weather patterns and similar timing of
seasonal atmospheric circulation developments in successive, or closely following years,
as in the examples mentioned in this article, must result from the persistence of some
elements of the situation which in most cases have not so far been identified. It seems
obvious, however, t hat the great extension of the polar water on the ocean surface to a
latitude near 60~ close to Europe in the late seventeenth cent ury must have pl ayed an
i mport ant part in the sequence of cold years in and around the 1690's. This came to
light as a result of attempts to map the sea surface temperatures as far back into the
Little Ice Age as possible. Mapping of the winds and weather systems, as well as
reconst ruct i on of the ocean current conditions, may be expected to t hrow further light
on the phenomena discussed here.
By a fort unat e circumstance it has proved possible to produce a series of synoptic
weather maps of 60 individual days between May and Oct ober 1588 largely from the
weather reports of ships of the Spanish Armada, which sailed against England in t hat
year and was part l y driven by storms, and part l y sailed to escape them, over courses
right around the British Isles and at one stage into the nort hern Atlantic t owards
Iceland. A historian, Mr K. S. Douglas of Belfast, had collected the ships' weather
reports and supplemented them by such reports as were available on land from the
document ed history of the occasion. He proceeded, with the help of meteorologists
working in Nort hern Ireland, to produce a series of weather maps. Luckily the
participants in the work up to this stage did not know that the ast ronomer Tycho Brahe
was making and recording daily weather observations on the then Danish island of
Hven (now Ven, 55~ 12~ in 1588. It was therefore possible to test the
preliminary ' isobaric' analysis of the daily weather maps by their success or lack of
success in accounting for the weather observed in the Sound between Denmark and
Sweden. (This was beyond the eastern limit of the area which the analysts had intended
to cover, but the suggested isobars commonl y did extend to about t hat point. The test
was therefore a severe one.) The result of the test was that the wind direction and
weather observed over the Sound were unquestionably in agreement with the maps on
636 Hubert H, Lamb PAGEOPH,
l
|
1
2

\

F
i
g
u
r
e

4

S
a
m
p
l
e

s
e
q
u
e
n
c
e

o
f

d
a
i
l
y

w
e
a
t
h
e
r

m
a
p
s

f
o
r

t
h
e

s
u
m
m
e
r

o
f

1
5
8
8
,

b
a
s
e
d

o
n

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
d
a
t
a

r
e
p
o
r
t
e
d

b
y

t
h
e

s
h
i
p
s

o
f
t
h
e

S
p
a
n
i
s
h

A
r
m
a
d
a

a
n
d

a

f
e
w

o
t
h
e
r

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
s

(
e
.
g
.

b
y

T
Y
c
H
o

B
m
~
H
I
0
.

.
<

2
~

~
r

t
~

e
~

c
~

638 Hubert H. Lamb PAGEOPH,
56% of the days and, if an adjustment were allowed for a position error of up to 250 km
of a major front, trough or axis of high pressure, the maps would be considered to be
accurate on 72% of the days. On a further 9% of the days the analysis did not extend so
far, and no indication of the winds or weather over the Sound was implied, so no test
was possible in those cases. Since only 19% of the preliminary maps failed the test, it
seemed worth while to re-analyse the entire series, using Tycho Brahe' s observations
and with the greatest possible care for logical continuity of the analysis from day to
day. I therefore did this, and it seems reasonable to deduce t hat the resulting map series
is 80-90% reliable in the Danish area (and probably better t han this in the region,
mostly around the British Isles, where the observation reports were most numerous).
The individual days' final maps generally had either three or four observation points
over an area which always included the British Isles and Denmark and ranged in some
cases from Portugal or Biscay in the south to England or Scotland or farther north, and
to the west of Ireland. A sample sequence is illustrated in Fig. 4.
Two noticeable features of this sequence recurred commonl y throughout t hat
summer: the - by twentieth-century experi ence- storminess generated exceptionally far
south over the Nort h Atlantic and the prominence of high pressure extending south
from the Arctic. The maps illustrated in Fig. 4 include ' Midsummer Day' (Sankte
Hans); they also conform to the conclusion reached independently by Pfister (personal
communication, 1978) from Swiss dat a t hat 1588 was probably the wettest summer of
the last 400 years in Switzerland. Repeatedly, in each mont h of the series, the daily
weather maps show the fronts pushing up from the south being halted near a line from
Iceland to Denmark, presumably by a persistent anticyclone over the higher latitudes of
this sector of the hemisphere in t hat summer, and later being driven south again by
northerly winds.
A possibly more important conclusion came from the fact t hat the weather map
analysis fixed the positions of many of the depression centres on individual days and
therefore made it possible to measure their speed of movement. This was a valuable
(and hardly to be expected) result owing to the absence of any meteorological
instrument measurements. Moreover the speeds of advance of cyclone cnetres at the
surface bear a statistical relationship to the gradient wind speeds in the warm air aloft,
which was already investigated long ago by PALMt~N (1928), and CHROMOW (1942,
partly based on work by Bergeron and Swoboda) and, through this, to the wind speeds
observable at cirrus cloud levels and hence in the jet stream. The daily weather maps of
summer and early aut umn 1588 showed t hat on at least six occasions in this one year
the jet stream strength seems to have reached, or somewhat exceeded, the probable
limit of the twentieth-century distribution for the same months. This doubtless confirms
the historians' general diagnosis of the reality of the strong storms, which more t han
any battle, destroyed and dispersed the Spanish Armada. But it also gives valuable
insight into the nature of the meteorological developments during this sample of a
summer during the onset phase of the Little Ice Age, when the European glaciers, at
least in the Alps, were advancing most rapidly and the Arctic sea ice had extended
Vol. 119, 1980/81 Disturbed Climate of Recent Centuries 639
s out h (as we kno w f rom British ships' reports) t o Icel and and t o bl ock t he Denmark
Strait in t he three i mmedi at el y precedi ng summers o f 1 5 8 5 - 8 7 . It seems probabl e t hat
al so i n 1588 t he i ce limit was near 65 ~ across muc h o f t he Gr e e nl a nd- No r we g i a n Sea
and t hat thi s pl ayed a part by mai nt ai ni ng a strenthened thermal gradi ent bet ween
l ati tudes about 50 and 65 ~ i n t he deduced strength o f t he j et streams in this zone.
Coul d it be t hat s ome o f t he other cl usteri ngs, i ncl udi ng t hos e in recent years,
ment i oned i n thi s article, have arisen t hrough similar cont rol s o f t he j et stream - and
wave devel opment s i n it, propagat ed downs t ream - as s oci at ed wi t h oc e an temperature
anomal i es, s uc h as NAMIAS (e.g. 1963, 1969, 1970) has identified, el sewhere in t he
hemi sphere?
REFERENCES
BAUR, F. (1950) Langj dhri ge Beobachtungsreihen. Pp. 710-806 in LIr,rKE-BAUR Meteorologisches
Taschenbuch, Band I, 2. Auflage. Leipzig (Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Geest & Portig K.-G.).
BERG~RON, T., FRIES, M., MOBnRG, C.-A., and STR6M, F. (1956)Fimbulvinter, Fornv~innen 1, 1-18.
BETrN, V. V., and PREORAZENSKY, JU. V. (1959) Variations in the St at e of the l ce on the Bal t i c Sea and in
the Danish Sound, Trudy 37, 3-13. Moscow (Gosudarst. Okean. Inst.) (In Russian.)
BRAY, J. R. (1971) Solar-climate Relationships in thePost-Pleistocene, Science 171, 1242-1243.
CnROMOW, S. P. Einfiihrung in die synoptische Wetteranalyse, 2nd edn. (Springer, Vienna 1942).
GOTTSCHALK, M. K. E. (1971) S tormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland: Deel I - De periode
voor 1400 (Van Gorcum, Assen).
GOTTSCHALg, M. K. E. (1975) Stormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland: Deel H - De periode
1400- 1600 (Van Gorcum, Assert).
GOTTSCHALg, M. K. E. (1977) Stormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland: Dee1111- De periode
1600- 1700 (Van Gorcum, Assen).
GRAHAM, H. G. The Soci al Li f e o f Scot l and in the Eighteenth Century (Black, London 1899). (A fuller
account with citations of original parish records is given in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account o f
Scotland, in many volumes, published 1791-1799.)
KOCH, L. The East Greenland lce, Meddelelser om Gr~land 130(3) (Danish Meteorological Institute,
Copenhagen 1945).
LAMB, H. H. Climate: Present, Past and Future. Volume 2 - Climatic History and the Fut ure (Methuen,
London and Barnes and Noble, New York 1977).
LAMa, H. H. (1979) Climatic Variation and Changes in the Wi nd and Ocean Circulation: the Li t t l e Ice
Age in the Northeast Atlantic, Quaternary Res. 11, 1-20.
MACKENzy, G. (1675) On a St orm and some Lakes in Scotland, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 10 (114), 307.
MANLEY, G. (1974) Central Engl and Temperatures: Mont hl y Means 1659 to 1973. Q. J. R. Met. Soc. 100,
389-405.
NAMIAS, J. (1963) Large-Scale Ai r - Se a Interactions Over the Nort h Pacific f r om Summer 1962 Through
the Subsequent Winter. J. Geophys. Res. 68(22), 6171-6186.
NAMIAS, J. (1969) Seasonal Interactions Between the Nort h Pacific Ocean and the Atmosphere During the
1960's. Mon. Weat. Rev. 97(3), 173-192.
NAraXAS, J. (1970) Climatic Anomal y Over the United St at es During the 1960's. Science 170, 741-743.
PALM'N, E. (1928). Zur Frage der Fortplanzungsgeschwindigkeit der Zyklonen. Met. Z. 45, 96-99.
PFISTER, C. (1978) Fluctuations in the Duration o f Snow-Cover in Swi t zerl and Si nce the Lat e Seventeenth
Century. Proc. Nordic Syrup. Climatic Changes and Related Problems: Climatological Papers No. 4,
1-6 (Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen).
WALL~N, C. C. (1953) The Variability o f Summer Temperature in Sweden and its Connection with
Changes in the General Circulation. TeUus 5(2), 157-178.
(Received November 1979)