Rácz Lajos

Rácz Lajos

Foglalkozás
történész

Publikációk

Absztrakt
The reality of modern global warming was an open question for scientists around the last millennium. Hungarian meteorologists were engaged in a scholarly debate about climate change, which was not possible to conclude with the research tools available at the time. The problem was further complicated by the fact that the climate of the Danubian Basin is in many respects different than either the global or continental European climate. The exact time or duration of the transition between the mini Ice Age (14th to 19th century) and recent global warming is difficult to determine in this particular region. On one hand, with regard to the beginning of global warming, using temperature increase statistics as the sole indicator would suggest that it had started as early as the last decades of the nineteenth century. At the same time, using the decreasing volume of precipitation as indicator, global warming will be seen to have started in the 1940s, even if a marked drought tendency was not perceptible until the 1970s. On the other hand, with regard to the end of the mini Ice Age, considering a predominantly cool and wet climate as the main characteristic, its purest form dominated the climate in the Danubian Basin until the 1910s and in a looser interpretation it lasted down to the 1940s.
Absztrakt
The main research questions of this study were to find out if there were a huge number of weather anomalies the 1830s and whether these extreme anomalies influenced the Hungarian nobility’s stance on social reform. The research was based on documentary sources and time series of instrumental observation in Buda. The research results verified that the decade of the 1830s was one of the most extreme periods of modern Hungarian environmental history. For the eleven years analysed, the average of monthly anomalies per year was nearly half a year (5.7 months). The gravity centre of climate change was 1833 and 1834. In 1833 alone there were seven months when weather anomalies occurred, moreover, there were five cases of extreme monthly averages of temperature and precipitation as well. Similarly, in 1834 there were seven extreme months; however, double anomalies occurred in only three cases. The structural climate analysis of the 1830s reveals a rather cold and dry climate profile. It is inferred that the high frequency of climate anomalies and series of ecological and economic conflicts positively influenced the attitudes of Hungarian nobility towards social reform.
Absztrakt
An Interview with Pál Beluszky (Rácz Lajos)