The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History


Book Description

This handbook offers the first comprehensive, state-of-the-field guide to past weather and climate and their role in human societies. Bringing together dozens of international specialists from the sciences and humanities, this volume describes the methods, sources, and major findings of historical climate reconstruction and impact research. Its chapters take the reader through each key source of past climate and weather information and each technique of analysis; through each historical period and region of the world; through the major topics of climate and history and core case studies; and finally through the history of climate ideas and science. Using clear, non-technical language, The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History serves as a textbook for students, a reference guide for specialists and an introduction to climate history for scholars and interested readers.







A Cultural History of Climate


Book Description

Explores the latest historical research on the development of the earth's climate, showing how even minor changes in the climate could result in major social, political, and religious upheavals.




The Climate of History in a Planetary Age


Book Description

Introduction : intimations of the planetary -- The globe and the planet. Four theses; Conjoined histories; The planet : a humanist category -- The difficulty of being modern. The difficulty of being modern; Planetary aspirations : reading a suicide in India; In the ruins of an enduring fable -- Facing the planetary. Anthropocene time -- Toward an anthropological clearing -- Postscript : the global reveals the planetary : a conversation with Bruno Latour.




Climate Change in Human History


Book Description

Climate Change and Human History provides a concise introduction to the relationship between human beings and climate change throughout history. Starting hundreds of thousands of years ago and going up to the present day, this book illustrates how natural climate variability affected early human societies and how human activity is now leading to drastic changes to our climate. Taking a chronological approach the authors explain how climate change created opportunities and challenges for human societies in each major time period, covering themes such as phases of climate and history, climate shocks, the rise and fall of civilizations, industrialization, accelerating climate change and our future outlook. This 2nd edition includes a new chapter on the explosion of social movements, protest groups and key individuals since 2017 and the implications this has had on the history of climate change, an improved introduction to the Anthropocene and extra content on the basic dynamics of the climate system alongside updated historiography. With more case studies, images and individuals throughout the text, the second edition also includes a glossary of terms and further reading to aid students in understanding this interdisciplinary subject. An ideal companion for all students of environmental history, Climate Change and Human History clearly demonstrates the critical role of climate in shaping human history and of the experience of humans in both adapting to and shaping climate change.




Climate, History and the Modern World


Book Description

With the inclusion of new material, preface and illustrations, this 2nd edition of Lamb's acclaimed book covers issues of past and present climates, impacts on human affairs and an understanding of the problems of forecasting.




Climate Change and the Course of Global History


Book Description

The first global study by a historian to fully integrate the earth-system approach of the new climate science with the material history of humanity.




Making Climate Change History


Book Description

This collection pulls together key documents from the scientific and political history of climate change, including congressional testimony, scientific papers, newspaper editorials, court cases, and international declarations. Far more than just a compendium of source materials, the book uses these documents as a way to think about history, while at the same time using history as a way to approach the politics of climate change from a new perspective. Making Climate Change History provides the necessary background to give readers the opportunity to pose critical questions and create plausible answers to help them understand climate change in its historical context; it also illustrates the relevance of history to building effective strategies for dealing with the climatic challenges of the future.




Climatological Data


Book Description




Climate in Motion


Book Description

Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth’s climate hinges on tracking interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular to the planetary. Climate in Motion shows that this multiscalar, multicausal framework emerged well before computers and satellites. Extending the history of modern climate science back into the nineteenth century, Deborah R. Coen uncovers its roots in the politics of empire-building in central and eastern Europe. She argues that essential elements of the modern understanding of climate arose as a means of thinking across scales in a state—the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, a patchwork of medieval kingdoms and modern laws—where such thinking was a political imperative. Led by Julius Hann in Vienna, Habsburg scientists were the first to investigate precisely how local winds and storms might be related to the general circulation of the earth’s atmosphere as a whole. Linking Habsburg climatology to the political and artistic experiments of late imperial Austria, Coen grounds the seemingly esoteric science of the atmosphere in the everyday experiences of an earlier era of globalization. Climate in Motion presents the history of modern climate science as a history of “scaling”—that is, the embodied work of moving between different frameworks for measuring the world. In this way, it offers a critical historical perspective on the concepts of scale that structure thinking about the climate crisis today and the range of possibilities for responding to it.