The Mayan climate extremes and megadroughts of the Medieval era
:El Castillo Pyramid, western side - Tulum Maya site QR Feb 2020.jpg
Bernard DUPONT: El Castillo Pyramid, western side – Tulum Maya site QR Feb 2020.jpg
Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash
By Jo Nova
13 year megadrought during Medieval Warm Period may have finished off the Maya
A slightly spooky new paper shows annual rainfall patterns from a thousand years ago on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. It’s so detailed, they list every drought by year, including 13 unbroken years of drought from 929 to 942AD. It’s a bit like someone unearthed the Maya Bureau of Meteorology records from a thousand years ago (except it’s better, because it’s a rock with no politics).
This is one of the highest-resolution tropical stalagmite records ever published. Each year the stalagmite grew by as much as a millimeter, allowing for a year by year analysis — or indeed 12 datapoints within each year.
During this era of perfect CO2, for some reason that no climate model can explain, the poor sods in Maya suffered through extreme swings from wet to dry, stacked back to back. The climate was chaotic. Droughts were followed by floods. It’s uncannily like “climate extremes” we are told man-made emissions are going to bring.
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/the-mayan-climate-extremes-and-megadroughts-of-the-medieval-era/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-mayan-climate-extremes-and-megadroughts-of-the-medieval-era
