Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist has been teaching at the undergraduate and master programmes of the Department of History, Stockholm University, since 2007. Ljungqvist have been supervisor of more than 25 student writing bachelor thesis in history, and has been invited as a guest lecture, for courses on both advanced and doctoral level, both at other universities in Sweden and abroad in palaeoclimatology. He has also held numerous popular science lectures, in both history and palaeoclimatology, at museums, public libraries, local history societies and for non-profit associations. Ljungqvist is at present main supervisor for one PhD student in history and co-supervisor for two PhD students, one in history, and one in physical geography.

Bibliometric data

(October 14, 2024, ISI Web of Knowledge [Google Scholar])

ISI Web of Science [Google Scholar])

Publications: 103 [131]

Total citations: 5160 [7838]

Average citations: 50.10 [59.83]

H-index: 32 [39]

Highly Cited in Field (ISI): 5

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Famines in medieval and early modern Europe—Connecting climate and society

  2024. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Andrea Seim, Dominik Collet. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews 15 (1)

  Article

  The article evaluates recent scholarship on famines in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods (c. 700–1800), synthesizing the state-of-the-art knowledge and identifying both research gaps and interdisciplinary potentials. Particular focus is placed on how, and to what extent, climatic change and variability is given explanatory power in famine causation. Current research, supported by recent advances in palaeoclimatology, reveals that anomalous cold conditions constituted the main environmental backdrop for severe food production crises that could result in famines in pre-industrial Europe. Such food crises occurred most frequently between c. 1550 and 1710, during the climax of the Little Ice Age cooling, and can be connected to the strong dependency on grain in Europe during this period. The available body of scholarship demonstrates that famines in medieval and early modern Europe best can be understood as the result of the interactions of climatic and societal stressors responding to pre-existing vulnerabilities. Recent research has shown that societal responses to these famines, and the appropriation of their consequences, have been much more comprehensive, dynamic, and substantial than previously assumed. The article concludes by providing recommendations for future studies on historical famines.

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• Climatic signatures in early modern European grain harvest yields

  2023. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (et al.). Climate of the Past 19 (12), 2463-2491

  Article

  The association between climate variability and grain harvest yields has been an important component of food security and economy in European history. Yet, inter-regional comparisons of climate–yield relationships have been hampered by locally varying data types and the use of different statistical methods. Using a coherent statistical framework, considering the effects of diverse serial correlations on statistical significance, we assess the temperature and hydroclimate (precipitation and drought) signatures in grain harvest yields across varying environmental settings of early modern (ca. 1500–1800) Europe. An unprecedentedly large network of yield records from northern (Sweden), central (Switzerland), and southern (Spain) Europe are compared with a diverse set of seasonally and annually resolved palaeoclimate reconstructions. Considering the effects of different crop types and time series frequencies, we find within regions consistent climate–harvest yield associations characterized by a significant summer soil moisture signal in Sweden, winter temperature and precipitation signals in Switzerland, and spring and annual mean temperature signals in Spain. The regional-scale climate–harvest associations are weaker than the recently revealed climate signals in early modern grain prices but similar in strength to modern climate–harvest relationships at comparable spatial scales. This is a noteworthy finding considering the uncertainties inherent in both historical harvest and palaeoclimate data.

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• The significance of climate variability on early modern European grain prices

  2022. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (et al.). Cliometrica 16, 29-77

  Article

  Grain was the most important food source in early modern Europe (c. 1500-1800), and its price influenced the entire economy. The extent to which climate variability determined grain price variations remains contested, and claims of solar cycle influences on prices are disputed. We thoroughly reassess these questions, within a framework of comprehensive statistical analysis, by employing an unprecedentedly large grain price data set together with state-of-the-art palaeoclimate reconstructions and long meteorological series. A highly significant negative grain price-temperature relationship (i.e. colder = high prices and vice versa) is found across Europe. This association increases at larger spatial and temporal scales and reaches a correlation of -0.41 considering the European grain price average and previous year June-August temperatures at annual resolution, and of -0.63 at decadal timescales. This strong relationship is of episodic rather than periodic (cyclic) nature. Only weak and spatially inconsistent signals of hydroclimate (precipitation and drought), and no meaningful association with solar variations, are detected in the grain prices. The significant and persistent temperature effects on grain prices imply that this now rapidly changing climate element has been a more important factor in European economic history, even in southern Europe, than commonly acknowledged.

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• Climate and society in European history

  2021. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Andrea Seim, Heli Huhtamaa. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews 12 (2)

  Article

  This article evaluates 165 studies from various disciplines, published between 2000 and 2019, which in different ways link past climate variability and change to human history in medieval and early modern Europe (here, c. 700-1815 CE). Within this review, we focus on the identification and interpretation of causal links between changes in climate and in human societies. A revised climate-society impact order model of historical climate-society interactions is presented and applied to structure the findings of the past 20 years' scholarship. Despite considerable progress in research about past climate-society relations, partly expedited by new palaeoclimate data, we identify limitations to knowledge, including geographical biases, a disproportional attention to extremely cold periods, and a focus on crises. Furthermore, recent scholarship shows that the limitations with particular disciplinary approaches can be successfully overcome through interdisciplinary collaborations. We conclude the article by proposing recommendations for future directions of research in the climatic change-human history nexus.

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• Climate in Nordic historical research - a research review and future perspectives

  2021. Heli Huhtamaa, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist. Scandinavian Journal of History

  Article

  This article assesses the development and current state of climate history research conducted in the five Nordic countries and Estonia. The possible societal impacts of past climatic changes already interested a handful of Nordic historians in the early twentieth century, but the lack of data on past climate fluctuations constrained scholarship in this field until recently. The data availability has increased fundamentally over the past decades due to the advances of palaeoclimatology. However, these advances have created new challenges, related to the ability to utilize data from the natural sciences in historical research as well as acquiring a basic knowledge on climatology. In many European countries, climate history has established itself as a strong academic subfield and consequently has created approaches as to how to overcome some main pitfalls, like climate determinism, related to the early works in the field. These epistemological advances are just beginning to gain a foothold in Nordic historical research. Thus, the article concludes with ten recommendations to improve future research in Nordic climate history.

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• Linking European building activity with plague history

  2018. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (et al.). Journal of Archaeological Science 98, 81-92

  Article

  Variations in building activity reflect demographic, economic and social change during history. Tens of thousands of wooden constructions in Europe have been dendrochronologically dated in recent decades. We use the annually precise evidence from a unique dataset of 49 640 tree felling dates of historical constructions to reconstruct temporal changes in building activity between 1250 and 1699 CE across a large part of western and central Europe largely corresponding to the former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Comparison with annual records of 9772 plague outbreaks shows that construction activity was significantly negatively correlated to the number of plague outbreaks, with the greatest decrease in construction following the larger outbreaks by three to four years after the start of the epidemics. Preceding the Black Death (1346-1353 CE) by five decades and the Great Famine (1315-1322 CE) by two decades, a significant decline in construction activity at c. 1300 CE is indicative of a societal crisis, associated with population stagnation or decline. Another dramatic decline in building activity coincides with the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648 CE) and confirms the devastating nature of this conflict. While construction activity was significantly lower during periods of high grain prices, no statistically robust relationship between the number of felling dates and past temperature or hydroclimate variations is found. This study demonstrates the value of dendrochronological felling dates as an indicator for times of crisis and prosperity during periods when documentary evidence is limited.

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• Klimatet och människan under 12 000 år

  2017. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist.

  Book

  I boken presenteras för första gången på svenska resultaten från den senaste klimathistoriska forskningen för en bred publik. I en välblandad mix av historia och klimatvetenskap får läsaren följa med på en medryckande resa genom världshistorien då kraftiga och plötsliga klimatförändringar emellanåt dramatiskt förändrat livsvillkoren för miljoner människor.

  För 6 000 år sedan var till exempel Sahara en frodig savann i stället för världens största öken, samtidigt som klimatet var varmt nog i Sverige för sköldpaddor och vilda vindruvor.  Senare under historien har stora variationer i monsunregnen i Asien gett upphov till antingen välstånd eller hungersnöd för miljontals människor.

  För tusen år sedan kollapsade indianska civilisationer av torka, samtidigt som ett varmare klimat tillät nordbor att kolonisera södra Grönland. Den så kallade lilla istiden, som kulminerade på 1600-talet, orsakade försörjningskriser i Europa och Kina och på många andra håll i världen.

  Författaren ger oss åtskilliga spännande och lärorika exempel på hur klimatförändringar under historien påverkat utvecklingen i olika delar av världen och hur människor hanterat eller inte hanterat konsekvenserna av klimatförändringar. Det är insikter som är mycket relevanta i vår tid.

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• Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries

  2016. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (et al.). Nature 532 (7597), 94-98

  Article

  Accurate modelling and prediction of the local to continental-scale hydroclimate response to global warming is essential given the strong impact of hydroclimate on ecosystem functioning, crop yields, water resources, and economic security. However, uncertainty in hydroclimate projections remains large, in part due to the short length of instrumental measurements available with which to assess climate models. Here we present a spatial reconstruction of hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries across the Northern Hemisphere derived from a network of 196 at least millennium-long proxy records. We use this reconstruction to place recent hydrological changes and future precipitation scenarios in a long-term context of spatially resolved and temporally persistent hydroclimate patterns. We find a larger percentage of land area with relatively wetter conditions in the ninth to eleventh and the twentieth centuries, whereas drier conditions are more widespread between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Our reconstruction reveals that prominent seesaw patterns of alternating moisture regimes observed in instrumental data across the Mediterranean, western USA, and China have operated consistently over the past twelve centuries. Using an updated compilation of 128 temperature proxy records, we assess the relationship between the reconstructed centennial-scale Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate and temperature variability. Even though dry and wet conditions occurred over extensive areas under both warm and cold climate regimes, a statistically significant co-variability of hydroclimate and temperature is evident for particular regions. We compare the reconstructed hydroclimate anomalies with coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model simulations and find reasonable agreement during pre-industrial times. However, the intensification of the twentieth-century-mean hydroclimate anomalies in the simulations, as compared to previous centuries, is not supported by our new multi-proxy reconstruction. This finding suggests that much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately, and highlights the importance of using palaeoclimate data to place recent and predicted hydroclimate changes in a millennium-long context.

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Show all publications by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist at Stockholm University