The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis

TLDR

Recent studies have shown strong temporal correlations between past climate changes and societal crises, but specific causal mechanisms have not been addressed. The authors quantified responses of 14 agro‑ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic variables to climate fluctuations from 1500–1800 in Europe and simulated the alternation of golden and dark ages across Europe and the Northern Hemisphere using temperature data and climate‑driven economic variables. Cooling from 1560–1660 triggered successive agro‑ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes that culminated in the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, and the study demonstrates that climate change was the ultimate cause while climate‑driven economic downturns were the direct cause of large‑scale human crises in preindustrial Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.

Abstract

Recent studies have shown strong temporal correlations between past climate changes and societal crises. However, the specific causal mechanisms underlying this relation have not been addressed. We explored quantitative responses of 14 fine-grained agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic variables to climate fluctuations from A.D. 1500–1800 in Europe. Results show that cooling from A.D. 1560–1660 caused successive agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. We identified a set of causal linkages between climate change and human crisis. Using temperature data and climate-driven economic variables, we simulated the alternation of defined “golden” and “dark” ages in Europe and the Northern Hemisphere during the past millennium. Our findings indicate that climate change was the ultimate cause, and climate-driven economic downturn was the direct cause, of large-scale human crises in preindustrial Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.