Sea storms in the Adriatic Sea and the Western Mediterranean during the last millennium

Data regarding the frequency and occurrence of sea storms in the Adriatic S ea and the Western Mediterranean during the last millennium have been extra cted from historical written sources. The Adriatic Sea shows two anomalous periods of high storm frequency: the first half of the 1500s and the second half of the 1700s. In the 1500s the storms were more frequent in autumn, w hile in the late 1700s they occurred at high frequency in winter. In the We stern Mediterranean, storms had a higher frequency in the first half of the 1600s, with two lesser periods of high frequency in the 1400s and at the e nd of the 1700s. Although both records show a maximum frequency of sea stor ms during the Sporer Minimum (1416-1534) of solar activity, sunspot series yield no, or poor, correlation during the other periods of lowest activity, i.e., Oort Minimum (1010-1090), Wolf Minimum (1282-1342), and Maunder Mini mum (1645-1715), suggesting that a teleconnection between sea storms and su nspots is improbable or masked in this region. No teleconnection was found either between the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and surges flooding Venice or the Western Mediterranean storms or between Venice surges and the Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).