171_ftp

Advanced Review

Climate and history: a criticalreview of historical climatologyand climate change historiographyMark Carey

This paper provides a critical analysis of recent climate history (or historicalclimatology) scholarship. It identifies four key subfields in this historiography ofclimate change. First, it examines scholarship on climate reconstructions that usea variety of innovative historical sources to document past climatic conditions.Second, it analyzes scholarship on social impacts and responses to climate change.This literature is prolific with significant attention given to climatic variabilityand climatic or weather-related disasters. Third, the paper discusses research onthe uses and abuses of climate knowledge, such as innovations in meteorologyand climatology as well as ways that Western climate knowledge helped justifycolonialismandperpetuate racism. Fourth, thepaper examines researchon culturalconstructions and perceptions of climate. This includes analysis of diverse climaticunderstandings and climate narratives that have varied across time and space.While the climate historiography is steadily expanding and constantly probingnew areas, this paper contends that the field overall would benefit from astronger emphasis on social history to examine race, class, and gender in climatehistory while also focusing on how social relations and power dynamics affecthumanclimate interactions. Additionally, it argues that the uncovering of morediverse climatemeanings and narratives, partly through better social history, couldboth enrich the historiography and contribute to todays broader discussions aboutglobal climate change in the past and future. 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How to cite this article:WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:233249. doi: 10.1002/wcc.171

INTRODUCTION

Climate history is a rapidly growing fieldthat has made significant contributions to theunderstanding of the past and could contributemuch more than it has to present-day discussionsabout global climate change knowledge, impacts,and responses. Historians of climateor historicalclimatologists, as Europeans more often refer tothe fieldhave tended to study climatehumaninteractions in the distant past. This climate historyscholarship for the period before the twentieth centuryis much more abundant than post-1900 studies. Infact, there are relatively few studies that historicizecurrent cultural and socio-political understandings

Correspondence to: [email protected] Division, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University ofOregon, Eugene, OR, USA

of global warming.18 When focusing on this morerecent period, researchers tend to focus on the scienceof global warming more than the social or culturalaspects. Yet, as Matthias Heymann points out, thehistory of climate ideas should be integrated intoour current views of climate.6 J.R. McNeill makes asimilar point, suggesting that the more one unpacksthe concept of climate change into its components,the more the record of the past becomes relevant toimagining the future9 (p. 45). When it comes to globalwarming discussions today, this record of the past isparticularly important for understanding the broaderhistorical processes that have led to anthropogenicclimate change and created the unequal geographiesof vulnerability that exist in the world today.10,11

The body of scholarship on climate historycan thusand shouldcontribute substantively tocurrent debates about climate change. Scholars of

Volume 3, May/June 2012 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 233

Advanced Review wires.wiley.com/climatechange

climate history, who are not always historians,have long been asking insightful, probing, criticalquestions about humanclimate dynamics. And otherstudies1217 have analyzed this climate historiography.This essay builds on those contributions by examininga broader range of climate history and historicalclimatology scholarship, by focusing on the state-of-the-art scholarship in recent years rather thanproviding a historical evolution of the historiography,and by emphasizing the need to incorporate scholarlyinsights from past periods into recent climate studiesand ongoing public discussions of climate change.The paper identifies four principal subfields in theclimate historiography: (1) climate reconstructions,(2) societal impacts and responses, (3) the uses andabuses of climate knowledge, and (4) the culturalconstructions and perceptions of climate. Examplescited in these four categories are meant to providerepresentative examples of approaches to the studyof climate history. They are not meant to offercomprehensive coverage of all periods and worldregionsan impossibility in such a paper. The essayconcludes by arguing that climate historiographycould benefit from a stronger emphasis on socialhistory and cultural analysis. By social history I meanthe study of social relations among diverse groupsor historical actors (stakeholders), with an explicitfocus on power dynamics embedded within andexpressed through those social interactions. Culturalanalysis involves a concentration on beliefs, values,narratives, and discourse. It recognizes and thusvalidates the presences of diverse knowledge systems.And it allows that these cultural expressions influencepublic perceptions, policymaking, and even climatescience.

RECOVERING PAST CLIMATES

Historical climatology, especially as it evolved inEurope after the 1960s, has always sought to usehistorical archives with data unavailable to mostscientists to help reconstruct past climates. In fact, upthrough the 1980s, it seemed one of the principalifnot the principalfocuses of climate history was onclimate reconstructions.18 Emmanuel Le Roy Laduriehad popularized this approach to climate history inhis famous book Times of Feast, Times of Famine.He offered an account of Little Ice Age climate byexamining glacier tongue positions and dates for grapeharvestsboth of which provided new informationabout the history of climate in Europe over the lastmillennium.19

Since then, many historical climatologists,especially in Europe, have continued research on

climate reconstructions. Christian Pfister, RudolfBrazdil, and Jean Grove have focused their work onLittle Ice Age climate reconstructions. Their researchreveals how diverse sources from paintings and diariesto newspapers and daily weather observations canhelp reconstruct past climatic conditions. It alsodemonstrates how their creative sources and researchinquiries can enrich historical understandings morebroadly by illuminating new forces of change.12,2023

In Robert Claxtons identification of periods ofdrought and other climatic hazards in colonialGuatemala, he also used a variety of innovativesources, from indigenous petitions to reduce laborand tribute demands to Spanish traveler chronicles toa variety of other ecclesiastical records.24 His climatereconstructions for Latin America also reveal thatthe region experienced many periods of warming andcooling during the Little Ice Age that were similar tothose in Europe, and which also had correspondingsocietal impacts.25 A different study provides acomprehensive analysis of documentary records andarchives in South America and Spain to helpreconstruct the regions climate history. Interestingly,research showed that climate reconstructions are moreabundant and accessible for the colonial period thanthey are for the post-1810 republican period whenthere was a gap in records. Analysis of these recordspoints to many long- and short-term climatic trendsin South America, which in many cases can be alignedwith other proxy records and scientific studies.26 Therole of climate in agriculture has also been important,and some studies have recognized the importanceof linking climate reconstructions with agriculturalhistory in the United States.27

Innovative climate reconstructions have oc-curred for Africa and Asia as well. For the King-dom of Lesotho and nearby areas of SouthAfrica, scholars have also used creative methods toreconstruct the history of rainfall variability duringthe nineteenth century. Using government documentsand missionary reports and correspondence, DavidNash and Stefan Grab were able to reconstruct aprecise history of drought episodes and wet periodsor floods to show climatic variability over morethan 70 years.28 In another study, Grab and Nashused similar documentary records to reconstructnineteenth century cold seasons in Lesotho between1833 and 1900. They then matched that documentaryevidence with instrument-based temperature datafrom Maseru and found the two methods aligned well,demonstrating both the validity of document-derivedclimate reconstructions and a valuable methodologyfor linking historical and scientific approaches.29

Using the extensive meteorological data recorded in

234 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Volume 3, May/June 2012

WIREs Climate Change Climate and history

local gazettes from the Guangdong Providence insouthern China since 975 AD, researchers have beenable to reconstruct a high-resolution list of typhoonlandfalls over more than 1000 years.30 Indeed, Chinaoffers scholars a rich set of documentary recordsfor historical climatology: classical documents datingback more than 2000 years; local gazettes during theMing and Qing Dynasties from 1471 to 1911; memosto the emperor from 1736 to 1911, when daily snow,rainfall, and other weather conditions were reporteddaily to the emperor; archives of the Republic ofChina 19121949; and many books and diaries. Usingthese documentary sources and sometimes comparingthem with field measurements or instrument-basedrecords, scholars have reconstructed detailed historiesof precipitation, weather-related disasters, and otherlong-term climatic conditions in China.3133

Researchers are using documentary recordsto reconstruct climate histories through innovativemethods in Australia, Europe, and elsewhere aswell. In one case, they used the daily temperaturesand barometric pressure observations from twolocal residents in Sydney Cove, New South Wales.They then tested the reliability of these datawith other documentary records and paleoclimatereconstructions, demonstrating well how historianscan collaborate with scientists and utilize scientificanalyses in historical studies.34 Some scholars haveused other creative methods to recover past climates,including the analysis of artwork and paintings.Hans Neuberger studied more than 12,000 Europeanpaintings to discover cloud cover, visibility, andthe amount of clothing people wore to extract arecord of climate change during the Little Ice Age.35

Thornes and Metherell examined Monets LondonSeries paintings in the late nineteenth century tohelp reconstruct climate, as well as perceptionsand anxieties about it.36 Another fascinating wayresearchers have recovered past climates is through theanalysis of ship logs, which have provided data aboutweather and climate as well as oceanic conditions.37,38

Other scholars have used various historical recordsto reconstruct past El Nino events or to identifyspecific floods, droughts, or hurricanes from Chinaand Europe to the Caribbean and Australia.3943

Some of these efforts to reconstruct pastclimates have led to much larger, innovative, andcross-disciplinary projects including the AtmosphericCirculation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE),the Climatological Database for the Worlds Oceans17501850 (CLIWOC), and the South EasternAustralia Recent Climate History (SEARCH). TheACRE (http://www.met-acre.org/) is a global projectwith seven international collaborating agencies that

seek not only to compile and reconstruct surfaceterrestrial and marine weather data during the last500 years, but also to digitize historical documentssuch as books, journals, and ship logbooks, and makethem freely available to researchers and the generalpublic. They have, for example, recovered weatherdata from 900 logbooks of the English East IndiaCompany from the 1780s to the 1830s, as well asapproximately 7000 Royal Navy logbooks between1914 and 1923.44 Another project, the CLIWOC(http://www.ucm.es/info/cliwoc/), existed from 2000to 2003 and collected European ship logbooks ofvoyages between 1750 and 1854. The project showedthat this documentary evidence provided even moredetailed information than originally anticipated, andit found particularly notably data on wind speedand direction that can contribute to both historicalunderstandings and climate reconstructions.45 TheSEARCH (http://climatehistory.com.au/) project isanother collaborative project linking science and thehumanities to understand Australian climate duringthe past 500 years. Like these other projects andthe research on historical climate reconstructionsin general, the SEARCH project relies on scientificproxy data from tree rings, coral, ice cores, andcave deposits as well as both documentary evidencefrom newspapers, settler accounts, and governmentrecords and weather data from journals, gazettes, andobservatories.

Research on climate reconstructions continuestoday. This subfield of historical climatology,however, has been eclipsed somewhat in recentyears as scientistsrather than historianshave takenover most climate reconstructions through their useof increasingly precise proxy data from tree rings,lake and ocean sediments, ice cores, and othersources. Nevertheless, as the literature demonstratesand as the collaborative projects show, historianscontinue to discover important archives and datato help reconstruct and thus better understand pastclimatesand increasingly beyond Europe wherehistorical climatology traditionally focused.

SOCIAL IMPACTS AND RESPONSES

Social scientists from a diversity of disciplinescontinually plead for more empirical studies on thesocial impacts of climate change and diverse responsesor adaptation to those changes.4649 To date, however,relatively few historians have taken up this chargefor the recent period.50,51 For periods prior to thetwentieth century, the scholarship on climate impactsand responses is more abundant than for the post-1900 era. And compared to the other topics addressed



in this paper, there is much more scholarship onclimate impacts, particularly if the analysis of weather-related disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, andfloods are included, though of course these studiesusually focus on particular events rather than longer-term climate change. Some studies examine climateimpacts on societies by explaining the climaticinfluences over the longue dureethat is, over manymillennia, often since the end of the last Ice Age morethan 10,000 years ago.7,5258 Others have focusedon narrower but still huge periods by examiningclimatesociety interactions in ancient periods, in themodern world, or during the Little Ice Age.19,23,5961

Catastrophic societal collapses such as the Mayaand the Greenland Norse have attracted significantattention in scholarly and popular literature on thesocial impacts of climate. Widely read books suchas Jared Diamonds Collapse help reinforce theseideas and the historiographys orientation.57 Manyof the studies on these societies use innovativemethods of paleoclimatology and geoarchaeology.They investigate a variety of topics from the fallof the Roman Empire, the disappearance of theMoche society, the Maya Collapse, the decline ofthe Greenland Norse, the Five Relocations amongpeople near the Yellow River in ancient China, andmany others.6267 Some of this research follows thetrend to emphasize climate catastrophes, focusingon dramatic historical events and reinterpretingthem from previous understandings to show howenvironmental forces shaped historical processes. Therole of climate in the Maya Collapse is a classic caseof attributing climate changealong with many otherfactorsfor the major demographic changes andabandonment of city states throughout Mesoamericafrom the eighth to the tenth century. Althoughsome researchers argue for the predominant effectof drought on Mayan societies, other scholars areincreasingly complicating that view by examining theways in which global climate change intersected withregional climatic conditions, especially drought, andhuman-caused deforestation that also affected localclimates.6871 Some scholars, however, continue toquestion the role of climate or deforestation forthe Maya collapse, thus indicating the limited dataavailable to reconstruct this history.72,73

While most of these studies on ancientclimate impacts focus on societal collapse or majornegative effects, some research discusses how climatechange aided certain societies. The Inca Empire,for example, benefited from improved irrigation,expanded settlement into the high Andes, andheightened crop yields during the late Medieval WarmPeriod leading up to the fourteenth century. These

advances facilitated the rise of one of the worlds mostexpansive empires that thrived from the fourteenthcentury to the early fifteenth.74 Archaeologists andanthropologists studying these periods use creativeand diverse methods to understand humanclimatedynamics. The lack of written records and only limitedavailability of cultural artifacts makes it challengingto truly understand attribution (causeeffect) or toprobe beliefs, values, and narratives of climate changeimpacts on societies in the distant past.

Climate change has also influenced Chinesehistory. David Zhang and others, for example, studylong-term climate records and point to specific periodswhen climatic fluctuations correlated with times ofpopulation change, frequency of war, and evendynastic shifts. They also assert that climate changeaffected agricultural production, which influencedprices, social conflict, famine, and warfare.7577

These ways in which climate change correspondswith agricultural change, price fluctuations, socialconflict, and political transformations have beenstudied worldwide, and not just in China. But Ka-wai Fan argues that historians and non-historiansmust be careful when attributing major historicalevents to climate change because they sometimeslose the relevant societal context and just correlatehistorical events with climatic changes. In short,Fan challenges not just historians of China but allscholars working on humanclimate dynamics toclearly decipher causeeffect relationships and striveto more explicitly attribute social change to climatechange.78

For the Early Modern and Modern eras, scholarshave also studied both climate shocks and long-term climate change impacts. Many of these studieslink imperial or revolutionary periods to climatevariability. In the Near East, for example, the onset ofthe Little Ice Age had profound effects on the OttomanEmpire, which was nearly obliterated in the latesixteenth century but went on to recover and expandsubsequently. As Sam White shows for the OttomanEmpire, the Little Ice Age climate intersected withother political, military, agricultural, and economicforces to affect the course of history over the longrun.79 Sherry Johnson argues that the great revolutionsin the Unites States, France, and Haiti occurred ina particularly tumultuous period of climate changeand catastrophic weather events between about1750 and 1810 that shook the entire AtlanticWorld.80 Other scholars have also shown how climatechange in this same period of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries had profound effects on societies,politics, and economiesfrom the French Revolution,Mexican independence movements, and other cases



of revolutionary movements worldwide.8183 Inother cases, researchers reveal subtle ways thatclimate affected society over long periodshow itchanged farming, influenced crops, shaped economicopportunities (or the lack thereof), affected politicsand social interactions, and influenced religiouspractices.59,8486

Just as climate change affected these diverseaspects of society, human responses to climatechange were also conditioned by the particularhistorical and spatial contexts. As Georgina Endfieldexplains in her study of climatesociety interactionsin colonial Mexico, responses to climate change andweather events such as droughts, floods, famines, andearthquakes varied according to the changing social,political and economic circumstances throughout thecolonial periodand they hinged on the degree ofpeoples social and environmental vulnerabilities84

(p. 3). Climate never acts alone, in other words.After all, natureculture dichotomies blur togetherand overlap in what scholars now call dynamicsocialecological systems or coupled naturalhumansystems.8789 In this context, it can be difficult todistinguish precisely the role of climate on societies,and thus scholars such as Endfield, Fan, and manyothers increasingly reveal intertwined forces shapingsocieties with climate as one among many variablesthat act alongside technological, political, economic,social, cultural, and environmental forces.

Many histories of climate impacts focus onclimatic or weather-related disasters, and a significantportion of these studies examine the last two centuries.Some of this research analyzes sustained climaticphenomenon that occur repeatedly over time, suchas hurricanes in the circum-Caribbean basin.80,9093

Others investigate droughts, such as in NortheastBrazil and the US Great Plains.9497 El Nino eventsare increasingly attracting attention as well, withresearch focusing not only on the mega El Ninos thatcrippled ancient societies along the Peruvian coast,but also worldwide El Nino impacts up through theearly twenty-first century.98103 Research on glacierhazards such as avalanches and glacial lake outburstfloods caused by climate change also demonstratesthe diverse societal impacts and responses that occuramong distinct social groups vulnerable to these alpinedisasters.1,104 In another case, Franz Mauelshagenexamines hailstorms in Switzerland and shows therole of insurance companies in long-term climateadaptation.105 Eleonora Rohland has also examinedthe relationship between climate and insurance inhistorical perspective based on her study of fire.106

Research on impacts and responses has alsoyielded some of the most innovative climate history

scholarshipthat of cross-disciplinary collaboration,such as among historians, glaciologists, and ice-coreclimatologists. In one case, scholars have examinedGreenland ice core data alongside written recordsfrom Europe from the seventh to ninth centuries tobetter understand how societies responded to climateanomalies.107 In another example, archaeologistsand glaciologists collaborated to understand thedramatic collapse of the Moche society during thesixth and seventh centuries.108 Researchers have alsocollaborated to analyze glacier hazards in morerecent periods, examining the physical dynamicsof avalanche-outburst flood triggers with societalresponses over time.109

A key contribution of the literature on socialimpacts of climate is how studies show climate indynamic interplay with a number of human andother environmental (non-human) factors. This is animportant move away from the climatic determinismof past generations and offers a more nuanced way ofunderstanding climatehuman interactions, as severalscholars suggest.18,85,110 Another strength of this bodyof literature is the way it illuminates vulnerability:the ways in which marginalized populations tendto suffer disproportionately from climatic variabilityand weather-related hazards because they lackthe socio-economic means to buffer themselves,possess little political power to avoid or recoverfrom their situations, or are pushed into theirvulnerable positions by outside factors attributedto power imbalances, economic inequality, andsocial divisions. This emphasis on vulnerabilityhas particular relevance for understanding globalwarming today because it suggests how certainmarginalized peoples or poorer countries will sufferfrom global climate change more than ruling classesor industrialized nations. Moreover, social scienceresearch today emphasizes adaptation and resilience,which these historical studies tackle through actualcase studies. These studies show the cost of long-term adaptationthe witches burned for weather-related crimes and the thousands killed by glacial lakeoutburst floodswhile larger societies rarely actuallycollapsed, or they did only because of multiple forcesworking in tandem with climate.1,7,111 This effort tolink climate research with the much richer scholarshipin disaster studies is increasingly occurring. In fact, theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)released a 2011 report from a prominent workinggroup on Managing the Risks of Extreme Eventsand Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation(SREX), which seeks not only to identify climate-related hazards, but also to merge research on disastersand climate.112 Historical climate studies of past social



impacts and responses thus have much to informhistories and other social science research on globalwarming occurring today and in the recent past. Itprovides the key empirical evidence that is lacking inmuch of the existing social science scholarship thatdiscusses global warming today and for the future.50

THE USES (AND ABUSES) OF CLIMATESCIENCE

Climate knowledge must always be contextualizedwithin a variety of societal forces and factors because,like all science, climatology emerges from distinctcultural conditions that differ in time and space.113

As Matthias Heymann explains in his synthesisand periodization of climate ideas from the EarlyModern era to the present, climate understandingschanged over time, were associated with distincthistorical actors and social groups, and depended notonly on scientific achievements, but also on broadertechnological, social, political, and cultural contexts6

(p. 582). An increasing body of scholarship revealsthese various forces that shaped past knowledge aboutclimateeverything from Alexander von Humboldtslegacy of human-caused climate change to the globalpolitics of climate knowledge from Antarctica in the1950s.114,115

Given the societal contexts of climate science,it is not surprising that scholars have alsodemonstrated how certain social groups have usedthat climate knowledge to pursue their ownagendasboth directly and indirectly, intentionallyand unintentionally. Indirectly, the accrual of climatescience in the hands of government bureaucraciesor among the intellectuals and the ruling elite hasresulted in the accumulation of power for thosegroupsthe power to withhold weather data, tomanipulate understandings, or to economically benefitcertain groups over others.116119 Even in caseswhen meteorological data is locally producedasresearch on the geography of science showsthereis still a degree to which weather observations andinstrumentation can eclipse local knowledge and feednationalization or nation-building agendas.118,120 Inother words, weather maps, like all maps, representpower.

More directly, climate discourse has beenused to justify colonialism, economic expansion,racism, slavery, and social divisions.121 Rulingclasses, colonial administrators, and governmentofficials have used and abused climate science,especially in previous periods when ideas aboutclimatic determinism proliferated. Some of these ideasabout climatic determinismhow climatic conditions

affected human bodies and societal development onbroad scalesjustified European colonialism eversince the fifteenth century.122 In the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, this idea of climatic determinismaffected everything from ideas about health andmedicine to colonial policies and beliefs about SocialDarwinism and eugenics. Western science showedEuropeans that people in the tropics were slothful,morally corrupt, and intellectually inferior to thevibrant, smart people of northern latitudes.123127

Ethnoclimatology and climatic determinism evenprovided the scientific justification for slave ownersto justify the institution because they maintained thatAfricans were more fit to labor in warm climates thanEuropeans were.128 After the mid-twentieth century,weather modification and climate control schemesbecame diplomatic tools and ways to bolster nation-building agendas amidst Cold War conflicts.3,129,130

Clearly, the construction of climate and variousweather discourses were not simply objectively studiedand understood through science. That discourse andknowledge could be used and abused to pursue specificagendas, to exploit and subjugate other peoples, andto expand the power of ruling classes from Europeand North America.

Scholarship on the history of climatology sincethe twentieth century has most frequently focusedon explaining how scientists came to understand andprove the notion of anthropogenic warming. Thisscholarship usually starts with current knowledgeabout global warming as the endpoint, and it thenhighlights particular innovations in the past, suchas Svante Arrhenius who in 1896 noted the effectsof carbon dioxide on global temperatures, or GuyStewart Callendar who in the 1930s and 1940slinked carbon dioxide emissions to anthropogenicwarming, or Charles Keeling who detected a strongincrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere frompre-industrial periods up to the 1950s.131135 SpencerWeart has demonstrated how these scientific ideasabout climate change have spread from science topopular discussions and politics since the 1980s,thereby linking his study of climate science topopular debates between skeptics and global warmingadvocates.136 In his innovative scholarship, PaulEdwards examines the history of climate models andthe emergence of what he calls global data to helpscientists convincingly represent (or simulate) globalclimate.2 This approachwhich probes not only whatwe know about the climate, but also how and why wehave come to know itrepresents a unique approachto recent climate history. Edwards contextualizesglobal warming understandings in a way that takesa critical angle of analysis on meteorology and



climatology, while simultaneously demonstrating thatskeptics are wrong to question climate science modelstoday. Deborah Coen has also examined how climatemodels evolved, but in the period prior to WorldWar I.118 She shows how models emerged in acontext of continental interactions among Europeanempires, thereby illuminating the political dimensionsof climate models and knowledge.

Another important aspect of climate scienceis the increasing emphasis on the combination oftraditional ecological knowledge (TEK) or indigenousecological knowledge (IEK) with western sciencein the detection of climate change impacts.137141

TEK involves diverse forms of knowledgeincludingtechnologies, beliefs, and skillsthat enable localpeople to maintain their livelihoods by using naturalresources and interacting with the local environment.The knowledge is passed among individuals and acrossgenerations through stories, oral histories, myths,narratives, rituals, and other cultural practices andcommunications. Integration of TEK with scientificobservations to detect human and environmentalimpacts of climate change is important for severalreasonsand it is highly relevant for historicalclimatology because TEK generally evolves throughpeoples historical relationships with their physicalenvironmental and through historically producedidentities. First, it is essential to incorporateindigenous peoples perceptions and voices intobroader reports about climate change because theyhave had little responsibility for the causes ofanthropogenic climate change, yet they have or willexperience the consequences of it disproportionately.Second, TEK can help detect climate change impactsbecause elders and climate experts in indigenouscommunities possess knowledge accumulated overmany generations that often focuses on areas withoutany scientific instruments to measure or observe theprocesses or impacts of climate change. Third, climatemodels often have low resolution at local and evenregional scales, and this is precisely the scale at whichindigenous observations emerge. Fourth, indigenouspeoples in some cases are already experiencing theeffects of climate change, and in some cases they haveimplemented creative ways of adapting to climatechange from which others can learn. Fifth, indigenouspeopleslike all human societiesare active partsof the ecosystems they inhabit and thus must beintegrated into climate analyses. Sixth, historicalpower imbalances have marginalized both indigenouspeoples and their knowledge; including TEK is moreequitable and democratic.138,140,142146

Cases in which TEK and scientific studiesboth detect the same phenomenon offer a higher

level of confidence about climate change impactsand environmental change.139,144 In Perus CordilleraBlanca mountains, local residents and instrument-based scientific analysis both report increasingly rapidglacial recession, less snow in the upper watershed,and an increase of falling glacier blocks since thelatter half of the twentieth century.147 Examples fromthe Arctic are the most common in literature oncoupled TEK-scientific detection of climate changeimpacts. Inuit experts and scientists report changesin wind patterns as well as the thinning of multiyearsea ice, the shortening of the sea ice season, andthe declining extent of sea ice cover.139,145,148151

While research demonstrates the important ways inwhich TEK can contribute to the detection of climatechange, there are often discrepancies between TEKand scientific observations that indicate uncertaintyin the identification of climate change impacts andthe correlation of the two knowledge systems.152

Nevertheless, the nascent incorporation of TEK intonational policy discussions represents at least somechange in the way climate science is viewed anddemonstrating the situatedness of climate knowledgeeven today.

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONSAND PERCEPTIONS

By now scholars have well established that climateis both the physical characteristics of the climatesystem and a cultural construction that emergesfrom perceptions, meanings, spirituality, discourse,and distinct knowledge bases that vary in time andspace.4,7,153,154 Climate histories on these culturalconstructions of climate tend to focus on perceptionsand climate narratives. In their introduction to a 2009special issue of the Journal of Historical Geographyon climate narratives, Steven Daniels and GeorginaEndfield explain that it is crucial to uncover diversenarratives because stories about climate emerge froma range of, often overlapping, forms of climateknowledge and citizenship, professional, popular,academic, indigenous, commercial and religious, andtheir relation to various forms of experience onthe ground. As a discursive field, this includesmany narrative forms, social memory, scientificmodeling, economic forecasting and apocalypticprophecy155 (p. 217). The editors of an anthologyabout climate history recognize that, in addition todiverse understandings and knowledge that shapesperceptions of climate, there are also shared beliefsthat affect human responses, which they refer toas social memory. As they explain, people surviveand adapt to climate change by networks of social



relations through which they gain access to extralabor, food, and other resources, and by cosmologiesand myths that preserve an unwritten record ofpast climatic episodes, successful responses to them,and proper relations to the environment156 (p. 5).Given this broad array of historical actors andperspectives, it is clearly important to understandnot only whose view of climate is being scrutinized,but also how different social groups have understoodand represented climateand how those views amongdistinct groups have changed over time.

Climate perceptions vary widely among distinctgroups of people, and these perceptions also changeover time. Clarence Glackens classic analysis ofclimate ideas from the Greeks to the Enlightenmentpresents both state of the art knowledge aboutclimatic systems during those two millennia as wellas changing understandings about how climate-affected individual bodies and societies more generallyup through the eighteenth century.157 During theonset of the Little Ice Age, for example, manyEuropeans believed the climatic variability thatcaused an increasing number of hailstorms andother crop-killing disasters was the work of witches.Tens of thousands of the so-called witches wereburned at the stake or otherwise prosecuted becausepeople blamed them for the inclement weather inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.21,111 Theseperceptions thus had significant social and religiousimplications, leading to many deaths, singling outwomen, and showing how politics, crime, andspiritual beliefs intersected in the perception of andresponse to climate change. Julie Cruikshank, inanother case, shows how geoscientists, Romanticpoets, and indigenous peoples in Canada and Alaskaexpressed distinct ideas about causation for LittleIce Age climate change but actually, upon closerscrutiny, were actually conveying similar conclusionsabout environmental change.158,159 Michael Bravodemonstrates the importance of situating climatechange perspectives within the specific culture beinganalyzed, in his case the Inuit, because these groupsnot only have distinct understandings but also canhave entirely different ways of explaining climatic andenvironmental changeand the role of humans inthose processes.160

Understandings of climate can also be tied tonational identities, as Jan Golinski shows for Britishidentity during the Enlightenment.161 Weather andclimate meanings in Britain during this period hadextensive roots and, as Vladimir Jankovic and AlvinSnider reveal, those ideas emerged from multiple,intersecting factors related to meteorology, local geog-raphy, religious beliefs, politics, and agriculture.162,163

There were also multiple types of climates, and thusthe emphasis on atmospheric climate misses impor-tant considerations of climates such as indoor air orplace-based weather patterns as opposed to the globalclimate.114,164,165 The history of meteorology also hasmany insights about weather, science, and society thatare beyond the scope of this essay because its vastliterature comprises its own subfield.166

Climate perceptions have also intersected withscience in other ways. During the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, medical climatology demonstratedthe healing effects of certain climates and regions,such as the Mediterranean, European alpine regions,Caribbean highlands and wind-blown beaches, theBritish Hill Stations, or the US Southwest.167171 Cli-mate, which was often tied to places up through theearly twentieth century, was thus used to heal bod-ies and cure diseases, especially tuberculosis. Healthtravel has occurred for thousands of years, but itbecame more systematic and popular (and easier)after the eighteenth century. Whether seeking outthe supposedly purifying air of the British sea coast,soaking in therapeutic alpine spas in the Alps, orescaping to the hypothetically healthier outlying areasaround Cape Town, South Africa, Europeans andlater North Americans have sought out many differ-ent climates and regions to heal their maladies overthe centuries.172176 Scholars recognize that these per-ceptions of salubrious climates had as much to dowith cultural factors as they did with medicine.172

European views of the Caribbean tropical climate, forexample, shifted dramatically over time. In the sev-enteenth century, many Europeans saw the tropicalclimate as morally corrosive and disease ridden.177,178

By the early twentieth century, however, some partsof the Caribbean such as Barbados had transformedinto one of the worlds most desirable tourist destina-tions; medical breakthroughs, tourism opportunities,economic agendas, and travel preferences were allresponsible for this transition.167 Understandings ofclimate acclimatization during the nineteenth cen-tury also emerged from this combination of scientificand cultural perceptions.179 Whether a Europeancould acclimate to new climates, especially in trop-ical regions, had as much to do with the politicaleconomy of empires and cultural perceptions of theTropics as it did with state of the art medical scienceon the subject.

Narratives of climate change that havevaried across time and space continue to affectunderstandings of present-day climate change.Scholars, however, are just beginning to uncover thediversity of these narratives, not to mention theirimplications for social relations and power dynamics.



As Mike Hulme explains convincingly, climate sciencealone is not enough to explain either how we thinkabout climate or why global warming has led tosuch rancorous debates in recent decades.4 Climateis an idea as much as it is measurable, quantifiableweather patterns. And these perceptions of climatehave changed considerably over time, for distinctpeoples, and in different places around the globe.There are even narratives of denial that can blockclimate change adaptation.180 As such, it is necessaryto approach climate, as Hulme does, by scrutinizingdiverse meanings of science, economics, values, andinternational politics when trying to pinpoint peoplesperceptions of climate change.

One of the most prolific narratives is that ofglobal warming crisis, which parallels the declension-ist narrative embedded in modern environmentalism.Climate narrativesand indeed much climate historyscholarshipperpetuates the environmentalist tale oftragedy, natural resource depletion, and catastrophiccollapse that has long been at the heart of the environ-mental movement.181 Moreover, the dominant viewamong both environmentalists and those striving tomitigate global warming today is that climate changehas resulted from the capitalist economy and theindustrialized nations that have been ruining the earthand depleting its natural resources through unreg-ulated, irresponsible pollution. Many in the globalwarming community use this narrative implicitly orexplicitly in their efforts to curb emissions by regulat-ing industry and slowing capitalist consumption.

Recent research is increasingly challengingthis narrative because of its inherent powerdimensions that can further socio-economic andpolitical inequality. Diana Liverman challenges whatshe identifies as three dominant global warmingnarratives: the crisis narrative, the differentiatedresponsibility narrative, and the market solutionsnarrative. These narratives serve some people morethan others, they have directed too much attention tointernational treaties and northsouth disagreements,and they also promote neoliberalism and othermarket-based solutions rather than offering distinctsolutions outside past practices.10 For example,historical narratives of vanishing glaciersa commonmotif of climate change storiesoften serve particulargroups such as scientists, conservationists, andtourists rather than local residents or marginalizedpopulations.182 And in some cases, the way thisnarrative of melting glaciers creates a vision of glaciersas vanishing water towersas has been done inmountain ranges worldwidecan empower certaingroups like hydroelectric companies and large-scaleirrigators (and thus disempower local residents),

even though glacier retreat has serious hydrologicconsequences for all these social groups.1 But inother cases, local residents in Peru, for instance,have mobilized the global narrative of climate crisisand melting glaciers to fight for their rights towater against a multinational energy corporationand the effects of neoliberal privatization. Althoughthese local Peruvians used collective action to seizecontrol of a large reservoir from Duke Energy, theygained international attention and support in partbecause they broadcast a (correct) story of vulnerablepopulations struggling to maintain water suppliesbelow disappearing glaciers.183 Historical scholarshipon climate can play a unique and important role herein uncovering this diversity of meanings, narratives,impacts, and responses to climate change. It is the jobof historians not only to uncover these histories in thefirst place, but also to help push their conclusions intobroader discussions about climate change today.

FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE

The existing climate historiography contains manyexcellent advances in climate reconstructions, socialimpacts and responses to climate change, theuses and abuses of climate science, and culturalperceptions and narratives. Climate reconstructionshave helped not only to uncover past climate databut also to utilize diverse, often under-examinedsources and archives that can enrich historicalclimatology, broaden understandings of the past,and improve historical methods. Research on socialimpacts of climate change shows the power ofclimate and non-human nature to shape historicalprocesses. But the most recent studies are carefulto attribute societal change such as social conflict,demographic changes, agricultural transformations,political shifts, and economic fluctuations to bothhuman and climatic variables. Climate, the researchshows, intersects with other human forces thatmust be contextualized through rigorous historicalinvestigations alongside climate studies. The historyof climate science demonstrates innovation in theevolution of climatology and climate knowledge, aswell as ways in which climate science can be useddirectly or indirectly toward other agendas, whichoften facilitate expanded state or elite power. Recentwork especially by anthropologists shows the valueof combining historically produced TEK with westernscientific studies. The outcome not only improvesknowledge of climate change impacts but also leadsto a more equitable sharing of knowledge (andthus power) between historically unequal groups.Finally, the scholarship on cultural constructions of



climate across diverse societies and periods showshow predominant climate ideas and narratives caninfluence policy discussions, economic plans, powerdynamics, and social relations. Climate is as muchcultural as it is scientific or atmospheric.

For all its achievements on diverse topics andapproaches, as well as vast coverage of the world, theinsights about humanclimate interactions emergingfrom this climate history scholarship are barely presentin public discussions of climate policy, mitigation, andadaptation. These public and policy discussions haveinstead tended to concentrate in two broad areas:(1) climate science and the changing atmosphere,especially temperature change, with a strong policyfocus on mitigating future warming through thereduction of greenhouse gas emissions; and (2) thegreat debate between climate skeptics and believers,with believers compiling ever increasing quantities ofproof of anthropogenic climate change and skepticsoffering much strong rhetoric to say humans arenot responsible for warming. The second topic has,in my view, partially derailed more than a decadeof scholarship as many researchers have focusedsimply on proving and re-proving anthropogenicinfluences on climate change, rather than workingout the nuances of the climate system or devotingstudies to peoples experiences with and responsesto climate change. In this way, the skeptics haveexerted an inordinate influence on the direction ofclimate research. The emphasis on climate science andmitigation raised in the first point, on the other hand,stems both from a widespread cultural valuation forscience over humanities and social science research.But it also results from the dearth of scholars inthe humanities and social sciencescompared to thephysical scienceswho actually do climate research.The end result is a relative shortage of research andpublic policy discussions about real peoples livedexperiences with climate and their perspectives andbeliefs, as well as an understanding of what drivesor impedes adaptation to climate change and adeeper appreciation of the societal forcesnot justthe environmental and climatic forcesthat affectpeoples vulnerability to climate change.

These are precisely the kinds of issues thatemerge from the climate history literature. Historiansand others doing historical climatology have begun toextract lessons from the past. These are not simplisticand misplaced ideas about history repeating itself.Rather, they are insights related to some of themost pressing issues in todays climate conundrum:adaptation, vulnerability, resilience, policies, and theattribution of impacts. Historians show, for instance,that adaptation to climate change is not going

to occur simply because we know more science.Adaptation occurs (or doesnt) because of socialrelations, power dynamics, available technologies,beliefs, religion, and narratives of the past andfuture. Vulnerability will not be reduced simplybecause we better understand climate-related sciences,such as the potential for stronger hurricanes or thetrigger mechanism of an avalanche or the rate offuture sea level rise. Science and technology helpreduce vulnerability significantly, to be sureand ashistory proves. But, to a large degree, economicsexplains why hundreds of thousands die in anearthquake in Haiti compared to dozens in theUnited States. Vulnerability, like adaptive capacity,has to do with social divisions, economic inequality,power imbalances, access to insurance, and religiousbeliefs that might put environmental processes inthe hands of gods not people. Societal resilience isanother key concept in climate discussions todaythat historical research shows was not necessarilybased just on the best science. Rather, reactionsto climate change were often just that: reactionary.Decision making was tied to a host of socio-economic,political, and cultural variables often unrelated toclimate or knowledge of climate science. New climatepoliciesor signatures on old climate treatiesarenot going to occur just because there is better scienceto quiet the skeptics. In fact, past government policiesbuilt on the days state of the art climate sciencesometimes fed imperialist agendas or helped justifyracism. Climate knowledge does not always leadto the right solutions; different social groups areaffected differently, sometimes negatively, even whengovernments apply that knowledge to policies. Finally,we will not pinpoint the causes of climate changeimpacts solely by studying science. Climate changeimpacts, history reveals, must be attributed to multipleintersecting variables, including both environmentaland human forces.

Despite the clear need to bring people (andthose who study human societies) into climatechange research and planning, climate science andscientists continue to dominate policy discussions andclimate assessments such as the IPCC. What all thesepoints call for, then, is both an incorporation ofhistorical insights into present-day climate discussionsand an even stronger societal focus in historicalclimate studies. This means more social historiesand cultural analyses of climate change to illuminatehow real people respond to climate change andhow social relations, power dynamics, and ideasaffect those responses. Other scholars have alsostressed the importance of societal analysis in climateresearch, whether it is McNeills recommendation



to study vulnerability more profoundly, or Howesplea for humanists to investigate narratives andthink more deeply and critically about climate dis-course, or Chakrabartys call for a negative uni-versal history that examines inequality and powerdiscrepancies of particular peoples, or Woodsproposition of eco-historicism that involves thickdescriptions of humanecological micro-contact, orCrates suggestion for anthropologists to do climateethnographies.9,11,16,153,184

But public debate and policy discussions havenot followed these paths to the people. Mike Hulmewarns that, far from including people, western soci-eties have instead returned to a form of climatic deter-minismwhat he calls climate reductionismthatdenies the presence of people in future scenariosportrayed primarily through mathematical models.185

This reductionist portrayal of the future, driven bythe hegemony of mathematical models and predictivenatural sciences, is not only problematic because iterases human beings and reduces the future to sim-plistic, predictable outcomes. These grand narrativesalso privilege certain social groups over others; theyneglect the analysis of power and social relations,and they deny the geographies of inequality that existworldwide and shape divergent perceptions, impacts,and responses to climate change.10,184 They also forgetthat real people face a host of other risks in their lives,and that they have to make choices about the futurebased on this rich assemblage of competing social,economic, livelihood, health, political, and emotionalrisks that may, at certain times, be more critical.186

The field of climate history, which long ago shedthe strands of climatic determinism, has put peopledirectly into the climate equation and uncovered theforces that affect humanclimate dynamics. But the

climate historiography could also push farther intosocial and cultural issues.

Climate history research should thus engage withsocial history and cultural analysis much more pro-foundlyand this would strengthen the scholarshipnot only on recent histories of global warming but alsothose on the distant past that also frequently gloss oversocial relations and power dynamics. Social history, inthis case, means explicit and detailed consideration ofthe traditional categories of analysis: race, class, andgender. It means studying work and labor, the family,ethnicity, rural and urban history, social movements,and all other aspects of society that delve into issues ofsocial relations and power dynamics. It is not enoughto say that the poor and marginalized suffer dispro-portionately from climate change. Who exactly arethe members of those groups? How and why are theymost vulnerableand since when? Are there exampleswhere socio-economic and political inequalities wereovercome to help societies adapt to climate change? Ifso, how and why did they achieve it? Do some peo-ple tell divergent stories about climate beyond crisisnarratives of doom and catastrophe? How do every-day people experience everyday weather? Historicalresearch has begun to answer these questions, but itcould go much further. So far there have been rela-tively few in depth social histories of climate change.There have been very few gender histories of climatefor any period or world region.179 There are evenfewer studies of youth or children and climate.187

Tackling these topics and answering these questionswould put real people more explicitly into climatestudies of the past. It would also enrich current discus-sions about the future of climate change by focusingmore directly on social relations, culture, and power.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant #1010132.

REFERENCES1. Carey M. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Cli-

mate Change and Andean Society. New York: OxfordUniversity Press; 2010.

2. Edwards PN. A Vast Machine: Computer Models,Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2010.

3. Fleming JR. Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History ofWeather and Climate Control. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press; 2010.

4. Hulme M. Why We Disagree about Climate Change:Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportu-nity. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2009.

5. Randalls S. History of the 2 C climate target. WileyInterdiscip Rev: Clim Change 2010, 1:598605.

6. Heymann M. The evolution of climate ideas andknowledge. Wiley Interdiscip Rev: Clim Change 2010,1:581597.



7. Behringer W. A Cultural History of Climate. Malden,MA: Polity Press; 2010.

8. Fleming JR. Historical Perspectives on ClimateChange. New York: Oxford University Press; 1998.

9. McNeill JR. Can History Help Us with Global Warm-ing?. In: Campbell KM, ed. Climatic Cataclysm: TheForeign Policy and National Security Implications ofClimate Change. Washington, DC: Brookings Institu-tion Press; 2008, 2648.

10. Liverman DM. Conventions of climate change: con-structions of danger and the dispossession of theatmosphere. J Hist Geog 2009, 35:279296.

11. Chakrabarty D. The climate of history: four theses.Crit Inq 2009, 35:197222.

12. Brazdil R, Pfister C, Wanner H, von Storch H,Luterbacher J. Historical climatology in Europethe state of the art. Clim Change 2005, 70:363430.

13. McCormick M. Historys Changing Climate: Cli-mate Science, Genomics, and the Emerging ConsilientApproach to Interdisciplinary History. J InterdiscipHist 2011, 42:251273.

14. Fleming JR, Jankovic V. Introduction: revisitingKlima. Osiris 2011, 26:115.

15. Jones P. Historical climatologya state of the artreview. Weather 2008, 63:181186.

16. Howe JP. History and climate: a road map to humanis-tic scholarship on climate change. Clim Change 2011,105:357363.

17. Diaz HF, Stahle DW. Climate and cultural historyin the Americas: an overview. Clim Change 2007,83:18.

18. Fischer DH. Climate and history: priorities forresearch. J Interdiscip Hist 1980, 10:821830.

19. Le Roy Ladurie E. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: AHistory of Climate Since the Year 1000. Garden City,NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.; 1971.

20. Pfister C. Climate and economy in eighteenth-centurySwitzerland. J Interdiscip Hist 1978, 9:223243.

21. Pfister C. Climatic extremes, recurrent crises and witchhunts: strategies of european societies in coping withexogenous shocks in the late sixteenth and early sev-enteenth centuries. Med Hist J 2007, 10:3373.

22. Brazdil R, Dobrovolny P, Luterbacher J, Moberg A,Pfister C, Wheeler D, Zorita E. European climateof the past 500 years: new challenges for historicalclimatology. Clim Change 2010, 101:740.

23. Grove JM. The Little Ice Age. London: Methuen &Co.Ltd; 1988.

24. Claxton RH. Weather-based hazards in colonialGuatemala. West Georgia Coll, Stud Social Sci 1986,25:139163.

25. Claxton RH, Hecht AD. Climatic and human his-tory in Europe and Latin America: an opportunity forcomparative study. Clim Change 1978, 1:195203.

26. Prieto MD, Herrera RG. Documentary sources fromSouth America: potential for climate reconstruction.Palaeogeogr Palaeocl 2009, 281:196209.

27. Baron WR. Retrieving American climate historyabibliographic essay. Agric Hist 1989, 63:735.

28. Nash DJ, Grab SW. A sky of brass and burningwinds: documentary evidence of rainfall variability inthe Kingdom of Lesotho, Southern Africa, 1824-1900.Clim Change 2010, 101:617653.

29. Grab SW, Nash DJ. Documentary evidence of climatevariability during cold seasons in Lesotho, southernAfrica, 1833-1900. Clim Dyn 2010, 34:473499.

30. Liu KB, Shen CM, Louie KS. A 1,000-year historyof typhoon landfalls in guangdong, southern China,reconstructed from Chinese historical documentaryrecords. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 2001, 91:453464.

31. Fang JQ. Establishment of a data-bank from recordsof climatic disasters and anomalies in ancient Chinesedocuments. Int J Climatol 1992, 12:499519.

32. Ge QS, Zheng JY, Hao ZX, Zhang PY, WangWC. Reconstruction of historical climate in China -High-resolution precipitation data from qing dynastyarchives. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 2005, 86:671.

33. Ge QS, Zheng JY, Tian YY, Wu WX, Fang XQ, WangWC. Coherence of climatic reconstruction from his-torical documents in China by different studies. IntJ Climatol 2008, 28:10071024.

34. Gergis J, Karoly DJ, Allan RJ. A climate reconstructionof Sydney Cove, New South Wales, using weather jour-nal and documentary data, 1788-1791. Aust MeteorolOcean 2009, 58:8398.

35. Neuberger H. Climate in art. Weather 1970,25:4656.

36. Thornes JE, Metherell G. Monets London series andthe cultural climate of London at the turn of the twen-tieth century. In: Strauss S, Orlove B, eds. Weather,Climate, Culture. New York: Berg; 2003, 141160.

37. Kuttel M, Xoplaki E, Gallego D, Luterbacher J,Garca-Herrera R, Allan R, Barriendos M, Jones PD,Wheeler D, Wanner H. The importance of ship logdata: reconstructing North Atlantic, European andMediterranean sea level pressure fields back to 1750.Clim Dyn 2010, 34:11151128.

38. Wheeler D, Garca-Herrera R. Ships logbooks in cli-matological research. Ann New York Acad Sci 2008,1146:115.

39. Gergis JL, Fowler AM. A history of ENSO events sinceAD 1525: implications for future climate change. ClimChange 2009, 92:343387.

40. Chenoweth M. The 18th Century Climate of JamaicaDerived from the Journals of Thomas Thistlewood,1750-1786. Philadelphia, PA: American PhilosophicalSociety; 2003.

41. Seiner Lizarraga L. Estudios de historia medioambien-tal, Peru, siglos XVI-XX. Lima: Universidad de Lima;2002.



42. Telelis IG. The Climate of Tubingen A.D. 1596-1605,on the Basis of Martin Crusius Diarium. Environ Hist1998, 4:5374.

43. Shao-wu W, Zong-ci Z. Droughts and Floods in China,1470-1979. In: Wigley TML, Ingram MJ, Farmer G,eds. Climate and History: Studies in Past Climatesand Their Impact on Man. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press; 1981, 271288.

44. Allan R, Brohan P, Compo GP, Stone R, LuterbacherJ, Bronnimann S. The International Atmospheric Cir-culation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Ini-tiative. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 2011, 92:14211425.

45. Garcia-Herrera R, Konnen GP, Wheeler DA, PrietoMR, Jones PD, Koek FB. CLIWOC: a climatologi-cal database for the worlds oceans 1750-1854. ClimChange 2005, 73:112.

46. Arnell NW. Adapting to climate change: an evolv-ing research programme. Clim Change 2010, 100:107111.

47. Wainwright SP. Is sociology warming to climatechange? Sociology 2011, 45:173177.

48. Crate SA. Climate and culture: anthropology in the eraof contemporary climate change. Ann Rev Anthropol2011, 40:175194.

49. Urry J. Climate Change and Society. Malden, MA:Polity Press; 2011.

50. Pfister C. The vulnerability of past societies to climaticvariation: a new focus for historical climatology in thetwenty-first century. Clim Change 2010, 100:2531.

51. Fleming JR. Climate, history, society, culture: aneditorial essay Interdiscip Rev: Clim Change 2010,1:475478.

52. Fagan B. The Long Summer: How Climate ChangedCivilization. New York: Basic Books; 2004.

53. Lamb HH. Climate, History and the Modern World.New York: Routledge; 1995 [1982].

54. Linden E. The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather,and the Destruction of Civilizations. New York: Simon& Schuster; 2006.

55. McIntosh RJ, Tainter JA, McIntosh SK. The Way theWind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action.New York: Columbia University Press; 2000, 142.

56. Ruddiman WF. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: HowHumans Took Control of Climate. Princeton: Prince-ton University Press; 2005.

57. Diamond J. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail orSucceed. New York: Viking Adult; 2004.

58. Grove JM. Little Ice Ages: Ancient and Modern. NewYork: Routledge; 2004.

59. Fagan B. The Little Ice Age: How Climate MadeHistory, 1300-1850. New York: Basic Books; 2000.

60. Fagan B. The Great Warming: Climate Change and theRise and Fall of Civilizations. New York: BloomsburyPress; 2008.

61. Miller Rosen A. Civilizing Climate: Social Responsesto Climate Change in the Ancient Near East. Lanham,MD: Altamira Press; 2007.

62. Sandweiss DH, Quilter J. El Nino, Catastrophism, andCulture Change in Ancient America. Washington, DC:Dumbarton Oaks; 2008.

63. Anderson DG, Maasch KA, Sandweiss DH. ClimateChange and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspec-tive on Mid-Holocene Transitions. Burlington, MA:Academic Press; 2007.

64. deMenocal PB. Cultural responses to climate changeduring the late holocene. Science 2001, 292:667673.

65. McGovern TH. Management for extinction in norsegreenland. In: Crumley CL, ed. Historical Ecology:Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes. SantaFe, N.M.: School of American Research Press; 1994,127154.

66. Crumley CL. The ecology of conquest: contrastingagropastoral and agricultural societies adaptaton toclimate change. In: Crumley CL, ed. Historical Ecol-ogy: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes.Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press;1994, 183201.

67. Huang CC, Su H. Climate change and zhou relo-cations in early Chinese history. J Hist Geog 2009,35:297310.

68. Gill RB. The Great Maya Drought: Water, Life, andDeath. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press;2000.

69. Haug GH. Climate and the collapse of Maya civiliza-tion. Science 2003, 299:17311735.

70. Hoddell DA, Curtis JH, Brenner M. Possible role ofclimate in the collapse of classic Maya civilization.Nature 1995, 375:391394.

71. Yaeger J, Hodell DA. The collapse of Maya civiliza-tion: assessing the interaction of culture, climate, andenvironment. In: Sandweiss DH, Quilter J, Washing-ton DC, eds. El Nino, Catastrophism, and CultureChange in Ancient America. Dumbarton Oaks; 2008,187242.

72. McNeil CL, Burney DA, Pigott Burney L. Evidencedisputing deforestation as the cause for the collapseof the ancient Maya polity of Copan, Honduras. ProcNatl Acad Sci 2010, 107:10171022.

73. Pringle H. A new look at the Mayas end. Science2009, 324:454456.

74. Chepstow-Lusty AJ, Frogley MR, Bauer BS, Leng MJ,Boessenkool KP, Caarcaillet C, Ali AA, Gioda A.Putting the rise of the Inca Empire within a climaticand land management context. Clim Past 2009, 5:375388.

75. Zhang DD, Brecke P, Lee HF, He YQ, Zhang J.Global climate change, war, and population decline inrecent human history. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2007,104:1921419219.



76. Zhang DD, Jim CY, Lin GCS, He YQ, Wang JJ,Lee HF. Climatic change, wars and dynastic cycles inChina over the last millennium. Clim Change 2006, 76:459477.

77. Zhang Q, Chen JQ, Becker S. Flood/drought changeof last millennium in the Yangtze Delta and its possi-ble connections with Tibetan climatic changes. GlobPlanet Chan 2007, 57:213221.

78. Fan KW. Climatic change and dynastic cycles in Chi-nese history: a review essay. Clim Change 2010,101:565573.

79. White S. The Climate of Rebellion in the Early ModernOttoman Empire. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress; 2011.

80. Johnson S. Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and theAtlantic World in the Age of Revolution. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press; 2011.

81. Grove R. Revolutionary weather: the climatic andeconomic crisis of 1788-1795 and the discovery ofEl Nino. In: Costanza R, Graumlich LJ, Steffen W,eds. Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated Historyand Future of People on Earth. Cambridge, MA: MITPress; 2007, 151168.

82. Neumann J. Great historical events that were signifi-cantly affected by the weather: 2. The year leading tothe revolution of 1789 in France. Bull Am MeteorolSoc 1977, 58:163168.

83. Swan SL. Drought and Mexicos struggle for indepen-dence. Environ Rev 1982, 6:5462.

84. Endfield GH. Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico:A Study in Vulnerability. Oxford: Blackwell Publish-ing; 2008.

85. Bulliet RW. Cotton, Climate, and Camels in EarlyIslamic Iran: A Moment in World History. New York:Columbia University Press; 2009.

86. Mrgic J. Wine or Rakithe interplay of climate andsociety in early modern Ottoman Bosnia. Environ Hist2011, 17:613637.

87. Folke C. Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspectivefor Social-Ecological Systems Analyses. Global Envi-ronmental Change 2006, 16:253267.

88. Turner BL. Illustrating the coupled humanenviron-ment system for vulnerability analysis: three casestudies. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2003, 100:80808085.

89. Young OR, Berkhout F, Gallopin GC, Janssen MA,Ostrom E, van der Leeuw S. The globalization of socio-ecological systems: an agenda for scientific research.Global Environ Change 2006, 16:304316.

90. Mulcahy M. Hurricanes and Society in the BritishGreater Caribbean, 1624-1783. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press; 2006.

91. Perez LA, Jr. Winds of Change: Hurricanes and theTransformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba. ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press; 2001.

92. Schwartz SB. The Hurricane of San Ciriaco: Disaster,Politics, and Society in Puerto Rico, 1899-1901. HispAm Hist Rev 1992, 72:303334.

93. Fraser WJ, Jr. Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Cen-turies of Storms at Sea and Ashore. Athens: Universityof Georgia Press; 2006.

94. Greenfield GM. The Realities of Images: ImperialBrazil and the Great Drought. Philadelphia: AmericanPhilosophical Society; 2001.

95. Worster D. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the1930s. New York: Oxford University Press; 1979.

96. Arons NG. Waiting for Rain: The Politics and Poetryof Drought in Northeast Brazil. Tucson: University ofArizona Press; 2004.

97. Finan TJ. Climate science and the policy of droughtmitigation in Ceara, Northeast Brazil. In: Strauss S,Orlove B, eds. Weather, Climate, Culture. New York:Berg; 2003, 203216.

98. Caviedes CN. El Nino in history: storming through theages. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 2001.

99. Cushman GT. Enclave Vision: foreign networks inPeru and the internationalization of El Nino researchduring the 1920s. Proc Int Comm Hist Meteorol 2004,1:6574.

100. Davis M. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Faminesand the Making of the Third World. New York: Verso;2001.

101. Glantz MH. Currents of Change: Impacts of El Ninoand La Nina on Climate and Society. New York:Cambridge; 2001.

102. Grove R. The East India Company, the Raj and theEl Nino: the critical role played by colonial scientistsin establishing the mechanisms of global climate tele-connections 1770-1930. In: Grove R, Damodaran V,Sangwan S, eds. Nature and the Orient: The Envi-ronmental History of South and Southeast Asia. NewYork: Oxford University Press; 1998, 301323.

103. Philander SG. Our Affair with El Nino: How WeTransformed an Enchanting Peruvian Current intoa Global Climate Hazard. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press; 2004.

104. Carey M. Living and dying with glaciers: peoples his-torical vulnerability to avalanches and outburst floodsin Peru. Global Planet Change 2005, 47:122134.

105. Mauelshagen F. Sharing the risk of hail: insur-ance, reinsurance and the variability of hailstormsin Switzerland, 1880-1932. Environ Hist 2011, 17:171191.

106. Rohland E. Sharing the Risk: Fire, Climate and Disas-ter, Swiss Re 1864-1906. Lancaster: Crucible Books;2011.

107. McCormick M, Dutton PE, Mayewski PA. Volcanoesand the climate forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D.750-950. Speculum 2007, 82:865895.



108. Shimada I, Barker Schaaf C, Thompson LG, Mosley-Thompson E. Cultural impacts of severe droughts inthe prehistoric Andes: application of a 1,500-year icecore precipitation record. World Archaeol 1991, 22:247270.

109. Carey M, Huggel C, Bury J, Portocarrero C, HaeberliW. An integrated socio-environmental framework forglacier hazard management and climate change adap-tation: lessons from lake 513, Cordillera Blanca, Peru.Clim Change 2011. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0249-8.

110. McCann JC. Climate and causation in African History.Int J African Hist Stud 1999, 32:261279.

111. Behringer W. Climatic change and witch-hunting: theimpact of the little ice age on mentalities. Clim Change1999, 43:335351.

112. IPCC. Summary for Policymakers. In: Field CB, BarrosV, Stocker TF, Qin D, Dokken D, Ebi KL, MastrandreaMD, Mach KJ, Plattner Allen SK, et al., eds. Intergov-ernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report onManaging the Risks of Extreme Events and Disastersto Advance Climate Change Adaptation. New York:Cambridge University Press; 2011.

113. Livingstone DN. Putting Science in Its Place: Geogra-phies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago, IL: Universityof Chicago Press; 2003.

114. Cushman GT. Humboldtian science, creole meteo-rology, and the discovery of human-caused climatechange in South America. Osiris 2011, 26:1944.

115. Howkins A. Melting empires? Climate change politicsin Antarctica since the international geophysical year.Osiris 2011, 26:180197.

116. Anderson K. Predicting the Weather: Victorians andthe Science of Meteorology. Chicago: University ofChicago Press; 2005.

117. Coen DR. Scaling down: the Austrian climatebetween empire and republic. In: Fleming JR, JankovicV, Coen DR, eds. Intimate Universality: Local andGlobal Themes in the History of Weather and Cli-mate. Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications;2006, 115140.

118. Coen DR. Imperial climatographies from Tyrol toTurkestan. Osiris 2011, 26:4565.

119. Cushman GT. The struggle over airways in the Amer-icas, 1919-1945: atmospheric science, aviation tech-nology, and neocolonialism. In: Fleming JR, JankovicV, Coen DR, eds. Intimate Universality: Local andGlobal Themes in the History of Weather and Cli-mate. Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications;2006, 175222.

120. Naylor S. Nationalizing provincial weather: meteo-rology in nineteenth-century Cornwall. Brit J Hist Sci2006, 39:407433.

121. Wood GDA. The volcano lover: climate, colonialism,and the slave trade in raffles history of Java (1817).J Early Modern Cultural Stud 2008, 8:3355.

122. Wey Gomez N. The Tropics of Empire: Why Colum-bus Sailed South to the Indies. Cambridge, MA: MITPress; 2008.

123. Livingstone DN. The moral discourse of climate: his-torical considerations on race, place and virtue. J HistGeog 1991, 17:413434.

124. Livingstone DN. Tropical climate and moral hygiene:the anatomy of a victorian debate. Brit J Hist Sci 1999,32:93110.

125. Kennedy D. The perils of the midday sun: climaticanxieties in the colonial tropics. In: MacKenzie JM,ed. Imperialism and the Natural World. Manchester:Manchester University Press; 1990, 118140.

126. Harrison M. The Tender Frame of Man: disease,climate, and racial difference in India and the WestIndies, 1760-1860. Bull Hist Med 1996, 70:6893.

127. Arnold D. Illusory Riches: representations of thetropical world, 1840-1950. Sing J Trop Geog 2000,21:618.

128. Stewart MA. Let us begin with the weather?: Climate,race, and cultural distinctiveness in the american south.In: Teich M, Porter R, Gustafsson B, eds. Nature andSociety in Historical Context. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press; 1997.

129. Doel RE, Harper KC. Prometheus unleashed: scienceas a diplomatic weapon in the Lyndon B. Johnsonadministration. Osiris 2006, 21:6685.

130. Harper KC. Climate control: United States weathermodification in the cold war and beyond. Endeavour2008, 32:2026.

131. Bowen M. Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of ClimateChange in the Worlds Highest Mountains. New York:Henry Holt; 2005.

132. Fleming JR. The Callendar Effect: The Life and Workof Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964), the Scien-tist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory ofClimate Change. Boston: American MeteorologicalSociety; 2007.

133. Weart SR. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cam-bridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 2003.

134. Hughes JD. Climate change: a history of environmen-tal knowledge. Capital Nature Social 2010, 21:7580.

135. Harper KC. Weather by the Numbers: The Genesisof Modern Meteorology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press;2008.

136. Weart SR. The idea of anthropogenic global climatechange in the 20th century. Wiley Interdiscip Rev:Clim Change 2010, 1:6781.

137. Ford JD, Vanderbilt W, Berrang-Ford L. Authorshipin IPCC AR5 and its implications for content: climatechange and Indigenous populations in WGII. ClimChange 2011. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0350-z.

138. Green D, Raygorodetsky G. Indigenous knowledge ofa changing climate. Clim Change 2010, 100:239242.



139. Huntington H, Callaghan T, Fox S, Krupnik I. Match-ing traditional and scientific observations to detectenvironmental change: a discussion on Arctic terres-trial ecosystems. Ambio 2004, 1823.

140. Salick J, Ross N. Traditional peoples and climatechange: introduction. Global Environ Chang 2009,19:137139.

141. Parry ML, Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, van der Lin-den PJ, Hanson CE. Cross-chapter case study. ClimateChange 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerabil-ity Contribution of Working Group II to the FourthAssessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress; 2007, 864868.

142. Agrawal A. Dismantling the divide between indige-nous and scientific knowledge. Dev Change 1995, 26:413439.

143. Alexander C, Bynum N, Johnson E, King U, MustonenT, Neofotis P, Oettle N, Rosenzweig C, SakakibaraC, Shadrin V, et al. Linking indigenous and scien-tific knowledge of climate change. Bioscience 2011,61:477484.

144. Cullen-Unsworth LC, Hill R, Butler JRA, WallaceM. A research process for integrating indigenous andscientific knowledge in cultural landscapes: princi-ples and determinants of success in the wet trop-ics world heritage area, Australia. Geogr J 2011.doi:10.1111/j.1475-4959.2011.00451.x.

145. Laidler GJ. Inuit and scientific perspectives on the rela-tionship between sea ice and climate change: The idealcomplement? Clim Change 2006, 78:407444.

146. Krupnik I, Ray GC. Pacific walruses, indigenoushunters, and climate change: Bridging scientific andindigenous knowledge. Deep-Sea Res Pt Ii 2007, 54:29462957.

147. Bury J, Mark BG, McKenzie J, French A, Baraer M,In Huh K, Zapata Luyo M, Gomez Lopez RJ. Glacierrecession and human vulnerability in the Yanamareywatershed of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Clim Change2010, 105:179206.

148. Aporta C. Shifting perspectives on shifting ice: docu-menting and representing Inuit use of the sea ice. CanGeogr-Geogr Can 2011, 55:619.

149. Ford JD, Gough WA, Laidler GJ, MacDonald J, Irn-gaut C, Qrunnut K. Sea ice, climate change, and com-munity vulnerability in northern Foxe Basin, Canada.Clim Res 2009, 38:137154.

150. Nichols T, Berkes F, Jolly D, Snow NB, Harbour TCoS.Climate change and sea ice: local observations fromthe Canadian Western. Arctic Arctic 2004, 57:6879.

151. Gearheard S, Pocernich M, Stewart R, Sanguya J,Huntington HP. Linking Inuit knowledge and meteo-rological station observations to understand changingwind patterns at Clyde River, Nunavut. Clim Change2010, 100:267294.

152. Wohling M. The problem of scale in indigenous knowl-edge: a perspective from Northern Australia. Ecol Soc2009, 14. Available at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art1/.

153. Crate SA, Nuttall M. Anthropology and ClimateChange: From Encounters to Actions. Walnut Creek,Cal: Left Coast Press; 2009.

154. Strauss S, Orlove B. Weather, Climate, Culture. NewYork: Berg; 2003.

155. Daniels S, Endfield GH. Narratives of climate change:introduction. J Hist Geog 2009, 35:215222.

156. McIntosh RJ, Tainter JA, McIntosh SK. Climate, his-tory, and human action. In: McIntosh RJ, Tainter JA,McIntosh SK, eds. The Way the Wind Blows: Climate,History, and Human Action. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press; 2000, 142.

157. Glacken CJ. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature andCulture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to theEnd of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley: Universityof California Press; 1967.

158. Cruikshank J. Glaciers and climate change: perspec-tives from oral tradition. Arctic 2001, 54:377393.

159. Cruikshank J. Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge,Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Van-couver: University of British Columbia Press; 2005.

160. Bravo MT. Voices from the sea ice: the recep-tion of climate impact narratives. J Hist Geog 2009,35:256278.

161. Golinski J. British Weather and the Climate of Enlight-enment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2007.

162. Jankovic V. Reading the Skies: A Cultural History ofEnglish Weather, 1650-1820. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2001.

163. Snider A. Hard Frost, 1684. J Early Mod Cult Stud2008, 8:832.

164. Jankovic V. Intimate climates, from skins to streets,soirees to societies. In: Fleming JR, Jankovic V, CoenDR, eds. Intimate Universality: Local and GlobalThemes in the History of Weather and Climate.Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications; 2006,134.

165. Good GA. A shift of view: meteorology in John Her-schels terrestrial physics. In: Fleming JR, JankovicV, Coen DR, eds. Intimate Universality: Local andGlobal Themes in the History of Weather and Cli-mate. Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications;2006, 3567.

166. Vogel B. Bibliography of recent literature in the his-tory of meteorology: twenty six years, 1983-2008.Hist Meteorol 2009, 5:23125.

167. Carey M. Inventing Caribbean climates: how science,medicine, and tourism changed tropical weather fromdeadly to healthy. Osiris 2011, 26:129141.



168. Jennings ET. Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy,Climatology, and French Colonial Spas. Durham, NC:Duke University Press; 2006.

169. Kennedy D. The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations andthe British Raj. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress; 1996.

170. Mitman G. Breathing Space: How Allergies ShapeOur Lives and Landscapes. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press; 2007.

171. Jankovic V. Confronting the Climate: British Airs andthe Making of Environmental Medicine. New York:Palgrave Macmillan; 2010.

172. Jankovic V. The last resort: a British perspective onthe medical south, 1815-1870. J Intercult Stud 2006,27:271298.

173. Kevan SM. Quests for cures: a history of tourismfor climate and health. Int J Biometeorol 1993, 37:113124.

174. Mitman G. Hay fever holiday health, leisure, andplace in gilded-age America. Bull Hist Med 2003,77:600635.

175. Tiffin H. Colonies, consumption and climate. In: Col-lier G, Schulze-Engler F, eds. Crabtracks: Progress andProcess in Teaching the New Literatures in English.Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.; 2002, 267282.

176. Walton JK. The English Seaside Resort: A SocialHistory, 1750-1914. New York: Leicester UniversityPress; 1983.

177. Kupperman KO. The puzzle of the American cli-mate in the early colonial period. Am Hist Rev 1982,87:12621289.

178. Kupperman KO. Fear of hot climates in the Anglo-American colonial experience. William Mary Quart1984, 41:213240.

179. Endfield GH, Nash DJ. Happy is the bride the rainfalls on: climate, health, and the woman question innineteenth-century missionary documentation. TransInst Brit Geogr 2005, 30:368386.

180. Norgaard KM. Living in Denial: Climate Change,Emotions, and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: MITPress; 2011.

181. Weart SR. Spencer weart on depicting global warming.Environ Hist 2005, 10:770775.

182. Carey M. The history of ice: how glaciers became anendangered species. Environ Hist 2007, 12:497527.

183. Carey M, French A, OBrien E. Unintended effects oftechnology on climate change adaptation: an histori-cal analysis of water conflicts below Andean glaciers.J Hist Geog 2012, 38:181191.

184. Wood GDA. Eco-Historicism. J Early Mod Cult Stud2008, 8:17.

185. Hulme M. Reducing the future to climate: a story ofclimate determinism and reductionism. Osiris 2011,26:245266.

186. Eakin H. Weathering Risk in Rural Mexico: Climatic,Institutional, and Economic Change. Tucson: Univer-sity of Arizona Press; 2006.

187. Laskin D. The Childrens Blizzard. New York: HarperCollins; 2004.


Documents

171_ftp