CHN Spring Newsletter Published

Nicholas Cunigan, our newsletter editor, has just published the Spring 2016 issue of our quarterly Climate History Newsletter. This issue contains some good news from our founders, an article that weighs the case for anthropogenic climate change that long predates industrialization, and an extensive list of recent publications in climate history. 

Download the newsletter by clicking here.

CHN Lunch on March 31 in Seattle

We are organizing an informal climate history lunch for next week's American Society for Environmental History conference in Seattle. We will meet on Thursday at 11:30 at Icon Grill, which is just a three-minute walk from the Westin Seattle. This will be a good chance to chat about some of our accomplishments over the past year, and to plan the future of our network and discipline. 

To give us a sense of the reservation we should make, please click here to tell us whether you can come

Inaugural PAGES Volcanic Impacts on Climate and Society (VICS) Workshop

The inaugural PAGES Volcanic Impacts on Climate and Society (VICS) workshop will be held at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, NY from June 6-8, 2016. The principal goals of the workshop are to (1) summarize the state of knowledge about radiative forcing from volcanic eruptions, (2) compare methods of studying and modeling climactic responses to radiative forcing and assess their consistency, (3) discuss the integration of historical documentary evidence with paleoclimate data and climate models, and (4) define future goals of the VICS working group based on the interests of the scientific community and potential stakeholders. For those interested in participating, abstracts can be submitted between March 18 and April 1 at https://conferences.geomar.de/event/VICS2016. Based on the level of interest, participants will be assigned either an oral or poster presentation. Limited travel support will be available for young scientists or researchers from underrepresented regions.

Upcoming MedCLIVAR Conference

This year’s MedCLIVAR conference will be held in Athens, Greece from September 26-30, 2016. The conference aims to address climate change in the Mediterranean region. The focus will be on the impacts and consequences of climate change to the region as well as the adaptation and policy solutions that have been put forth to address these changes. Presentations and papers will be multidisciplinary and timescales will range from historical climate studies to discussions of current issues. Some papers will even consider future climate scenarios. Abstract submissions open on April 3, 2016 and close on May 31, 2016. For more information, please see: http://www.medclivar2016conf.eu/index.php

Did the Spanish Empire Change Earth's Climate?

Ask most people about climate change, and you will soon find that even the relatively informed make two big assumptions. First: the world’s climate was more or less stable until recently, and second: human actions started changing our climate with the advent of industrialization. If you have spent any time reading through this website, you will know that the first assumption is false. For millions of years, changes in Earth’s climate, driven by natural forces, have radically transformed the conditions for life on Earth. Admittedly, the most recent geological epoch – the Holocene – is defined, in part, by its relatively stable climate. Nevertheless, regional and even global climates have still changed quickly, and often dramatically, in ways that influenced societies long before the recent onset of global warming. Read more

Anthropogenic Climate Change in Historical Context

Peter U. Clark and co-authors have published an ambitious paper that aims to integrate current anthropogenic climate change into a long term timeline. Clark et al. use historical data on the relationship between carbon dioxide and sea level temperature to assess changes in earth’s climate over the last 20,000 years and the impact of these changes on the development of human civilization. The historical data suggests that the changes in climate brought about in the twenty and twenty-first centuries may well have consequences that endure for the next 10,000 years. Thus, climate change needs to be discussed in a broader historical context which the authors feel is absent from current policy discussions. The abstract and full text article can be found here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2923.html.

Call for Sessions and Papers: 5th PAGES Open Science Meeting

The fifth PAGES Open Science Meeting (OSM) will take place from 9-13 May 2017 in Zaragoza, Spain. The Scientific Program Committee invites scholars to take an active part in organizing the scientific program of the conference. The program will be comprised of plenary, parallel and poster sessions. The plenary sessions will host keynote talks intended to stimulate discussions on the role of past global change science in providing information about strategies for a sustainable world, on the engagement of stakeholders in active cutting-edge research, and on the added value of interdisciplinary approaches. The parallel and associated poster sessions will accommodate top-level ongoing research. Up to three sessions will be run in parallel, allowing accommodation of 24 parallel sessions. Please suggest sessions with a provisional title, potential conveners and a brief description. The Scientific Program Committee will prepare the session program based upon your input, aiming at a fair balance between the topics. Proposals are welcome at marie-france.loutre@pages.unibe.ch until 1 May.