Volcanic winter of 536
Summer snow damages crops in Qingzhou
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The familiar date is probably off by a year: the traceable snow entry belongs to 537, not 536.
The entry is under 537
The listing dates the Chinese summer snow to August 536. The identifiable entry belongs to the following year: the History of the Southern Dynasties records that in the autumn, seventh lunar month of 537, snow fell in Qingzhou and damaged seedlings and grain crops.
The Chinese seventh lunar month does not map exactly onto the Gregorian August either, so “August 537” is itself a conventional approximation.
The same chronicle places severe frost at Qushan in Qingzhou during the preceding lunar month, which makes the snow part of a sequence of damaging summer cold.
Damaged, not delayed
The chronicle says the snow harmed the crops. It does not say the harvest was delayed, and it does not quantify the loss.
The Nan Shi was compiled later — credited to Li Yanshou, more than a century after the reported weather.
It supplies no exact day, no temperature and no snowfall amount.
The cause is a modern inference
The chronicle gives no physical cause at all.
Modern ice-core and tree-ring research makes volcanic aerosol forcing from an eruption in 535 or early 536 a strong explanation for the broader cold anomaly, but it cannot prove the cause of this particular snowfall.
A recent scholarly review concludes that summer frosts and snowfall affected China in 536–537, contributing to crop failures, drought and famine — while not supporting treatment of every Chinese report as an August 536 observation.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date disputed
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 0537-08.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The listed date appears to be wrong by a year: the identifiable Nan Shi entry belongs to 537, not 536.
- The Chinese seventh lunar month does not map exactly onto the modern Gregorian month of August; 'August 537' is a conventional approximation.
- The Nan Shi was compiled later and provides no exact day, temperature or snowfall amount.
- Chinese records from 536 describe other events—hail, great cold, famine and drought—but should not be conflated with the Qingzhou snow entry.
Checked against
- Nan Shi, volume 7–10 scan
- David W. Pankenier, The climate downturns in China caused by volcanic eruptions in 535–40 CE
- Sigl et al., Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years
- Chinese-source discussion locating the Nan Shi entries
- Helama et al., Volcanic dust veils from sixth-century tree-ring isotopes