End of the Medieval Warm Period (1340s)

Timeline

1. 1341–1343Northern and Northwestern Europe · Northwestern EuropeThough the famine caused by abnormal precipitation and low temperatures in 1315–1317 had passed, in the early 1340s land fertility, population structure, and grain prices in northwestern Europe were still recovering, and society's capacity to respond had not been fully rebuilt, laying a fragile foundation for subsequent multiple crises.
2. 1343–1347Alpine region · AlpsFrom the mid-1340s, multiple climate proxy records in the Northern Hemisphere showed declining mean temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and increasing signs of glacier advance and shortened growing seasons; scholars generally regard this period as a key stage in the transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age.
3. 1348–1350Western Europe · Western EuropeWhen the Black Death broke out in 1348, Europe was already in a state of overlapping climate transition and social pressure; malnutrition, wartime levies, and climate fluctuations weakened population immunity, and environmental history research views the late 1340s as a compound crisis period in which the 'ecological balance of the old regime' collapsed.