Ancient meteo manuscripts help modern scientists

New study has revealed that ancient manuscripts written by Arab scholars can provide significant meteorological information for modern scientists. Spanish scientists from the Universidad de Extremadura have turned to Arabic documentary sources from the 9th and 10th centuries to get meteo information. The sources, penned by historians and political commentators of the era, focus on the social and religious events of the time, but do refer to abnormal weather events as well. Analyzing writings of scholars, historians and diarists during the Islamic Golden Age (816-1009 CE) of Iraq has helped meteo scientists reconstruct climate pattern of the past. "Climate information recovered from these ancient sources mainly refers to extreme events which impacted wider society such as droughts and floods," said lead author Dr. Fernando Dominguez-Castro. The documents also mentioned the conditions, which rarely occurred in ancient Baghdad such as hailstorms, the freezing of rivers or even cases of snow, he added. The manuscripts revealed an increase in cold weather in the first half of the 10th century, a significant drop of temperature during July 920 CE and three separate recordings of snowfall in 908, 944 and 1007, exactly before the Medieval Warm Period. "Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models," said Dominguez-Castro.