Climate variability and climate change have already impacted natural and anthropogenic systems. Aside from influence it exerts on natural systems, climate variability has significant effects in terms of agricultural productivity, harvest quality and human health, which in turn increase the risk of socio-economic vulnerability. The aims of the proposed project are to reconstruct the climate variability in the Carpathians and their impacts on human communities over the past 500 years based on historical data and natural archives (e.g. ice cores, lake sediments, tree rings). Specifically, we will:

 1) develop high-resolution climate time series (temperature, precipitation, extreme events) based on historical data in conjuction with natural archives;

 2) calibrate the climatic signal evidence derived  from multi-proxy archives by correlating it with the available instrumental data, in order to reconstruct climate variations in the Carpathians during the past 500 yrs;

 3) develop maps of climatic parameters distributions in order to produce a spatial reconstruction of climatic condition of the study area in the investigated timeframe;

 4) reconstruct the impact of climate variability and and extreme events on agriculture and human society. 

The expected results can be used as a tool for assessing the water resources and infrastructure planning and will contribute to filling the paleoclimate dataset from Europe.