Climatic impacts on early modern European grain harvest yields

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 (c. 1500–1800). 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–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–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.