Medieval Climate Transition of the 1320s

Timeline

1. 1321–1325Western Europe · Western EuropeAfter the Great Famine of 1315–1317, in the early 1320s Western European agriculture was still affected by successive years of heavy rain, saturated soils, and unstable harvests. Tree-ring and ice-core records show a shift in North Atlantic Oscillation patterns during this period, leading to cooler, wetter summers, persistently high grain prices and risk of social unrest, accumulating pressure for larger-scale crises in the mid-to-late 1320s.
2. 1325–1330Greenland and East Asia · EurasiaIn the mid-to-late 1320s, Norse colonies in Greenland, Arctic hunting communities, and East Asian agricultural regions were all affected by cooling climates and precipitation anomalies. Around 1329 the Yuan Empire suffered frequent natural disasters, echoing environmental pressures in Europe, Greenland, and elsewhere across continents. The climate transition was not a single event but a deep background linking agriculture, migration, and political crises in the global history of the 1320s.