Jarmila Macková

Climate in the Czech Lands during the 1780s in Light of the Daily Weather Records of Parson Karel Bernard Hein of Hodonice (Southwestern Moravia): Comparison of Documentary and Instrumental Data

Visual daily meteorological observations are analysed according to the diary of parson Karel Bernard Hein of Hodonice near Znojmo (south-western Moravia), carried out from 1 February 1780 to 5 October 1789. Records written in Latin are a complement of the description of events of everyday life. They allow characterisation of temperature and precipitation patterns of the individual months and frequencies of occurrence of selected weather phenomena (thunderstorm, fog). On the basis of monthly temperature and precipitation indices derived from the interpretation of Heins reports, a quantitative interpretation of temperatures and precipitation is performed for the meteorological station Kuchařovice in the 1780s with respectto the reference period 1961–2000. Heins records are further compared withregular meteorological observations of the station Prague-Klementinum and in the broader European context with data from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. From the comparison, a good agreement is evident according to documentary evidence and instrumental measurements. Heins records are, together with further written sources and meteorological measurements, utilised for describing extreme periods during the 1780s in the Czech Lands (from the view of measurements of the station Prague-Klementinum): the warm summer of 1783, the hard winter of 1783/84, the hitherto coldest March and spring of 1785, the hitherto coldest autumn of 1786, and the hard winter of 1788/89 with so far the coldest December.