TU Wien researchers identify 1342 floods as a multi-year series

Researchers from the Technical University (TU) of Vienna have determined that the ‘Magdalenenflut’ of 1342, considered the most severe flooding in Central Europe during the second millennium, was actually the peak of a two-year series of flood events.

By analyzing over one thousand entries from contemporary sources, a team led by historian Andrea Kiss and Günter Blöschl reconstructed a ‘string of pearls’ consisting of sixteen interconnected flood events around the year 1342. These floods caused the Danube, Moldau, Elbe, Rhine, and Main rivers to overflow, resulting in thousands of deaths from drowning, hunger, and disease. The floods also caused massive economic damage, destroying nearly all bridges in the affected regions and severing vital trade routes, such as the stone bridge in Prague.

The study, published in the journal ‘Nature’, suggests that the frequency of these events was likely driven by volcanic activity in 1340 and 1341. Sulfur-containing aerosols in the atmosphere from these eruptions may have caused cooling and altered large-scale circulation patterns, contributing to the extreme weather.