Precipitation variability in the czech land since ad 1500. How strong is the signal contained within documentary sources?

Past climate may be reconstructed from a number of proxies. Some of them are “natural archives”, such as tree rings, ice cores and boreholes, most of which are sensitive to air temperature. Other valuable information can be also found in “man-made archives”. Various sources of documentary data very oft en refer not only to temperature but also to other aspects of past weather and climate, such as dry and wet periods. We use the long and homogeneous precipitation series from the recent instrumental period to calibrate precipitation indices derived from older documentary sources. Th e primary objective of this contribution is to provide a quantitative reconstruction of precipitation in the Czech Lands for the last 500 years. Calibration and verifi cation statistics are used to evaluate the strength of the signal. Reconstructed precipitation series are compared with similar Central European documentary-based reconstructions, as well as with reconstructions based on a range of natural proxies