The climate of Polish lands as viewed by chroniclers, writers and scientists

Abstract

In the first part of this paper the authoress presents several descriptions of atmospheric phenomena and events in various seasons, extracted from chronicles and literature. Authors of historical novels and romances drew their weather descriptions from historical annals preserved until their time. Gathering such accounts and assembling them into a chronological sequence allows for a reconstruction of climate conditions of the period preceding the use of instrumental measurements of meteorological elements. Such research falls within the scope of historical climatology. This paper includes several examples of weather accounts extracted from chronicles, almanacs, novels and poetry. In the period of instrumental measurements in mid-nineteenth century, the first networks of meteorological stations were set up, where the observations were executed in compliance with instructions concerning time and the order of precedence. This paper outlines the activity of the Galician network of meteorological stations, which operated between 1866 and 1918 in the southern part of Poland, then under the reign of the Austrian Empire. © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2010.