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      Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe.

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          Abstract

          The Black Death, originating in Asia, arrived in the Mediterranean harbors of Europe in 1347 CE, via the land and sea trade routes of the ancient Silk Road system. This epidemic marked the start of the second plague pandemic, which lasted in Europe until the early 19th century. This pandemic is generally understood as the consequence of a singular introduction of Yersinia pestis, after which the disease established itself in European rodents over four centuries. To locate these putative plague reservoirs, we studied the climate fluctuations that preceded regional plague epidemics, based on a dataset of 7,711 georeferenced historical plague outbreaks and 15 annually resolved tree-ring records from Europe and Asia. We provide evidence for repeated climate-driven reintroductions of the bacterium into European harbors from reservoirs in Asia, with a delay of 15 ± 1 y. Our analysis finds no support for the existence of permanent plague reservoirs in medieval Europe.

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          Most cited references34

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          European seasonal and annual temperature variability, trends, and extremes since 1500.

          Multiproxy reconstructions of monthly and seasonal surface temperature fields for Europe back to 1500 show that the late 20th- and early 21st-century European climate is very likely (>95% confidence level) warmer than that of any time during the past 500 years. This agrees with findings for the entire Northern Hemisphere. European winter average temperatures during the period 1500 to 1900 were reduced by approximately 0.5 degrees C (0.25 degrees C for annual mean temperatures) compared to the 20th century. Summer temperatures did not experience systematic century-scale cooling relative to present conditions. The coldest European winter was 1708/1709; 2003 was by far the hottest summer.
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            Calculating unbiased tree-ring indices for the study of climatic and environmental change

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              European spring and autumn temperature variability and change of extremes over the last half millennium

              E. Xoplaki (2005)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
                Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
                1091-6490
                0027-8424
                Mar 10 2015
                : 112
                : 10
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway; boris.schmid@gmail.com n.c.stenseth@ibv.uio.no.
                [2 ] Dendroecology, Landscape Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland; Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; Global Change Research Centre AS CR, v.v.i., CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; and.
                [3 ] Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway;
                [4 ] Dendroecology, Landscape Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland;
                [5 ] Department of Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, NO-0372 Oslo, Norway.
                Article
                1412887112
                10.1073/pnas.1412887112
                25713390
                63872656-5f6f-4833-999c-886e46bd5fdd
                History

                Yersinia pestis,climate-driven disease dynamics,medieval epidemiology

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