EUROpest combines archival source analysis with archaeology, archaeogenetics, paleoecology and paleoclimatology, and subjects case studies to novel human-supervised machine-learning to identify the causal role of factors influencing regional outbreaks. As the contemporary imagination is guided in its understanding of epidemic disease by the outbreaks of the past, EUROpest’s contribution will be critical to developing more nuanced and realistic scenarios of future pandemics, academic as well as popular.

CMCC role
Climatic conditions are treated as a core component of the social–ecological context in which disease outbreaks emerge, because climate shapes pathogen dispersal and ecology, affects animal, vector and human behaviour, and influences landscapes and socio-economic conditions. The climate work therefore aims to provide a robust, high-resolution description of European temperature and precipitation variability for 1300–1800 CE that can be integrated with evidence on historical outbreaks.

The methodology combines two complementary sources of climate information. First, climate reconstructions are produced from documentary evidence and natural proxy records, updating established multi-proxy European benchmarks and extending them further back in time. The reconstruction workflow is designed to extract consistent seasonal signals from sparse and incomplete historical networks, while explicitly characterising uncertainty that arises from non-climatic influences, measurement limitations, and methodological choices.

Second, high-resolution climate simulations are generated to add process-based context and to evaluate reconstruction quality. Regional climate modelling is used to translate low-resolution global paleoclimate simulations to finer spatial and temporal scales more suitable for regional societal analyses, using standardised external forcings for the study period. To improve the realism of past climate variability—particularly for Europe, which is strongly influenced by ocean–atmosphere interactions—the modelling strategy includes coupling with an active ocean component.

The end product is a set of high-resolution climate fields and uncertainty information that provide the climatic backbone for investigating causal mechanisms linking past climate variability with disease dynamics across different places and times.

Activities
EUROpest will carry out regional case studies – from Spain to Lithuania, Greece to England – selected on the basis of available and procurable written, scientific and archaeological data. It will holistically consider the contexts of plague outbreaks identified in those regions, to understand how context both facilitated outbreaks and also shaped them, and their short- and medium-term impacts.

Expected results
With EUROpest PIs already engaging policy makers, the mathematical precision of the eco-bio-social analysis EUROpest proposes will help design more successful and targeted interventions for future pandemic response.

Coordinating organization
UMK – uniwersytet mikolaja kopernika

Partners
GEORGETOWN – georgetown university non profit corporation
MPG – max-planck-gesellschaft zur förderung der wissenschaften e.v.
IGIPZPAN – instytut geografii i przestrzennego zagospodarowania im. stanisława leszczyckiego polskiej akademii nauk
LU – latvijas universitāte
GWZO – leibniz-institut für geschichte und kultur des östlichen europa e.v.
UNIZAR – universidad de zaragoza
UT – eberhard karls universität tübingen
CNRS – centre national de la recherche scientifique
UwB – uniwersytet w białymstoku
CMCC – fondazione centro euro-mediterraneo sui cambiamenti climatici