The Late Antique Little Ice Age

Compact Disasters · Sep 19, 2026 · 1m

In 536, the Byzantine historian Procopius reported that the Sun shone without its usual brightness. Other writers described summer frosts, failed harvests and seasons that seemed to have become hopelessly confused. For centuries, these extraordinary accounts were treated cautiously, but evidence recovered from ancient trees and polar ice has shown that the chroniclers were recording a genuine climatic disaster.

In this episode of Compact Disasters, we investigate the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a prolonged period of cooling that began with a series of enormous volcanic eruptions during the…