Climate of the Past

InterArctic project: understanding the interaction between artic environments and societies

September 21, 2020

Figure 1. Synthesis figure of the InterArctic project.

The InterArctic project (Fig. 1) focuses on vulnerability, resilience and adaptation of northern societies facing global change. The current rapid warming of Arctic and Subarctic climates has already produced many changes in the social, economic and cultural behaviour of the populations inhabiting these regions and more changes are expected to come. In this context, looking at the past provides th ...[Read More]

Learning lessons from the past to inform the future

Dr Charles Williams August 21, 2020

1.5 m air temperature climatology differences, Pliocene simulation from the UK’s physical climate model, relative to the preindustrial era.

A fairly recent blog post here reiterated the compelling comparison between the current COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing climate emergency, focusing on extreme events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and severe rainfall-related flooding, all of which are likely to get worse as the climate warms (Langendijk & Osman 2020). This comparison has been made by us Climate Scientists since the COVI ...[Read More]

Weather hidden within dusty parchments and weighty tomes—historical climatology and its contribution to our understanding of the past climate

Chantal Camenisch, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research and Institute of History, Section of Economic, Social and Environmental History, University of Bern, Switzerland. April 7, 2020

What is historical climatology? Historical climatology is an interdisciplinary research field between paleoclimatology and the historical sciences, that explores the archives of societies to examine the climate of the past. Archives of society mean all man-made remains of the past in contrast to archives of nature. The latter represent physical remains of natural processes such as tree rings and s ...[Read More]

Are the risks of zoonotic diseases rising in the Anthropocene due to climate change?

Ichiko Sugiyama, Ph.D. Candidate in the Faculty of Chemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel March 16, 2020

The recent coronavirus outbreak (i.e., nCovID-19; Fig. 1) has caused global panic, along with widespread travel bans, home quarantines and country-wide lockdowns. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared nCoVID-19 as a pandemic as of March 11th, 2020 (WHO, 2020). To tackle this global health crisis, scientists are attempting to synthesize a vaccine, while countries are trying to mitigate the n ...[Read More]