Historical writings reveal how people weathered the Little Ice Age

“Dear diary, it was freezing outside today…” If someone today wrote that in their journal, it might seem like an innocuous enough line, perhaps never to be carefully considered again. But what if, 500 years from now, scientists used that entry about the weather to answer climate mysteries?

Researchers looking to the past have done just that, combing through diaries and other old documents to reconstruct the climate of 16th century Transylvania, part of modern-day Romania.