Q-Fall of Rome due to Climate Change?

A: Tree Rings Report Odd Weather Patterns...
... study of tree rings ... provides evidence of climate shifts ... occurred from A.D. 250 to 550, a period better known as the fall of the Roman Empire.

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News: January 22, 2011

Rome may have fallen hundreds of years ago, but much of the civilization the Romans built still dots the landscape today. One team of scientists recently unearthed a different kind of Roman artifact that may hold a strange clue to the empire's downfall.

A study of tree rings recently published in the journal Science provides evidence of climate shifts that, perhaps not coincidentally, occurred from A.D. 250 to 550, a period better known as the fall of the Roman Empire.

Ulf Buentgen and his team of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research collected tree-ring data from ancient wood found in medieval castles and Roman ruins. They created a detailed history of climate change over the past 2.5 millennia and found the data point to the end of the Roman Empire as a period of exceptional climate change.

Michael Mann, professor of meteorology at Penn State, was not a member of the research team, but explains how the information found in tree rings changes what we know of the last centuries of Roman imperialism.

"They were able to tease out two pieces of information from these trees," Mann explains. "They can get some idea of how warm the summers were, and how wet the sort of late-spring/early summer was." 

 Continues: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/22/133143758/could-climate-change-have-led-to-the-fall-of-rome?ft=1&f=1001




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