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.
Inhoudsopgave
1. General Introduction: Weather, Climate, and Human History.- Part I Reconstruction.- 2. The Global Climate System.- 3. Archives of Nature and Archives of Societies.- 4. Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Documentary Evidence—Overview.- 5. Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Personal Documentary Sources.- 6. Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Institutional Sources.- 7. Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Early Instrumental Observations.- 8. Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Historical Sources in Glaciology.- 9. Analysis and Interpretation: Homogenization of Instrumental Data.- 10. Analysis and Interpretation: Calibration-Verification.- 11. Analysis and Interpretation: Temperature and Precipitation Indices.- 12. Analysis and Interpretation: Spatial Climate Field Reconstructions.- 13. Analysis and Interpretation: Modeling of Past Climates.- 14. The Denial of Global Warming.- Part II Historical Climatology: Periods and Regions.- 15. The Holocene.- 16. Mediterranean Antiquity.- 17. China: 2000 Years of Climate Reconstruction from Historical Documents.- 18. Climate History of Asia (Excluding China).- 19. Climate History in Latin America.- 20. A Multi-Century History of Drought and Wetter Conditions in Africa.- 21. Recent Developments in Australian Climate History.- 22. European Middle Ages.- 23. Early Modern Europe.- 24. North American Climate History (1500–1800).- 25. Climate from 1800 to 1970 in North America and Europe.- 26. Global Warming (1970–Present).- Part III Climate and Society.- 27. Climate, Weather, Agriculture, and Food.- 28. Climate, Ecology, and Infectious Human Disease.- 29. Climate Change and Conflict.- 30. Narrating Indigenous Histories of Climate Change in the Americas and Pacific.- 31. Migration and Climate in World History.- Part IV Case Studies in Climate Reconstruction and Impacts.- 32. The Climate Downturnof 536–50.- 33. The 1310s Event.- 34. The 1780s: Global Climate Anomalies, Floods, Droughts, and Famines.- 35. A Year Without a Summer, 1816.- Part V The History of Climate Ideas and Climate Science.- 36. Climate as a Scientific Paradigm—Early History of Climatology to 1800.- 37. Climate and Empire in the Nineteenth Century.- 38. From Climatology to Climate Science in the Twentieth Century.
Over de auteur
Sam White is Associate Professor of Environmental History at the Ohio State University, USA and author of the award-winning book
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (2011), among other publications. He is also co-founder and director of the Climate History Network.
Christian Pfister is Professor Emeritus and Senior Researcher at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He has published 11 books and more than 200 articles. He is co-founder of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH).
Franz Mauelshagen is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. He has published several books, including the award-winning
Wunderkammer auf Papier (
A Cabinet of Curiosities on Paper, 2011), and more than 50 articles on the history of science, disasters, climate, and the Anthropocene.