A look back to the days of Robert the Bruce and the Battle of Bannockburn could provide clues as to why this summer has been so wet and miserable, according to a team of scientists.

A look back to the days of Robert the Bruce and the Battle of Bannockburn could provide clues as to why this summer has been so wet and miserable, according to a team of scientists.

Historical accounts show that in the three years after the 1314 battle there was a great famine which was related to the climate and the "Great Rains".

A report which provides the possible explanation has just been published in The Holocene, a scientific journal dedicated to fundamental scientific research on environmental change over the last 10,000 years.

It was prepared by a team of scientists from Scotland, including Professor Alastair Dawson, senior research fellow within the University of Aberdeen's Institute for Coastal Science and Management, along with collaborators from the United States, Ireland and Norway.

It is unusual in that it uses information from Greenland ice to reconstruct past ocean surface temperatures across the North Atlantic and compares this information with historical documentary records of past climate.

Historical accounts have drawn attention to the year's AD 1315 to 1318 as a period of climatically induced famine often referred to as having been associated with the "Great Rains". Many believe the whole of north-western Europe may have been affected when it rained in a manner similar to present throughout three successive summers, autumns and winters.

It was a period without parallel in recent history and coincided with a time of severe food shortages, military raids for food, as well as death due to famine. Irish Annals describe the summer of AD 1315 as " ugly with foul weather, intolerably damagingly and tempestuous ".

The year AD 1316 coincided with a " general failure of all fruits of the earth by excessive rains and unseasonable weather leading to famine " while AD 1317 includes accounts of famine-induced cannibalism (for example, during the siege of Carrickfergus Castle).

"The episodes of exceptional rainfall associated with the famines of AD 1315 to 1318 coincide with ice core measurements that indicate the occurrence of abnormally high Atlantic sea surface temperatures," said Professor Dawson. "It is inferred that such ocean surface overheating led to increased evaporation and hence an increased supply of moisture ultimately delivered as summer rains and winter storms.

"Whatever the causes of such an abrupt change in climate, we would be well served to learn the lessons of history."