| The climatological triggers of major plague outbreaks in late medieval and early modern
Europe remain unclear; recent studies have been inconclusive. Plague is primarily a rodent
disease and due to the involvement of rodent hosts and insect vectors, the epidemiology of
plague is complicated, but research on outbreaks in the Third Pandemic, which
began in the late nineteenth century, has shown that in central and eastern Asia
plague is linked to specific meteorological conditions. The disease adapts to a varied
spectrum of ecological and climatological settings, which influence the development of
plague waves, and due to Europe’s geographical diversity, this paper focuses on one
region, England, in its search for meteorological parameters contributing to plague
outbreaks.
The study period of this paper is defined by the arrival of Yersinia pestis in the British
Isles in 1348 and the end of the fifteenth century. During this time, England’s population
dynamics were mortality-driven due to recurrent epidemic disease; and public health
measures, such as quarantining, had not yet been introduced, hence the influence
of social factors on the formation of major plague waves was very limited. The
geographical and temporal focus of this study allows for the combination of the
series of English major plague outbreaks, verified in the original texts, with the
high-quality climate reconstructions based on both documentary sources and proxy
data available for this region. The detailed analysis of the mechanisms contributing
to English plague waves presented in this paper, reveals a complex interplay of
time-lag responses and concurrent conditions involving temperature and precipitation
parameters. |