Climate Historians Meet for CCHRI Workshop

Last weekend, climate researchers, historians, and archaeologists from around the world gathered in Princeton for the annual Climate Change and History Research Institute workshop. Participants were instructed by leaders in their fields on how to use climate proxy data collected from ice cores (Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute) and speleothems (Dominik Fleitmann, University of Reading), and in societal resilience theory (Marty Anderies, Arizona State University). Workshop attendees learned how these proxies are produced and the strengths and weaknesses inherent in them, in addition to theoretical framework for understanding how societies’ subsistence practices relate to their environments’ variable productivity.

Find out more about CCHRI at their webpage,  here. 

Late Pleistocene Glacial Fluctuations in the Subtropical Andes

A new article in Quaternary Science Reviews offers new insights into late Pleistocene weather patterns in arid subtropical South America. Analyzing beryllium isotopes taken from moraine boulders from Argentina’s Nevado de Chañi, Mateo A. Martini, et al. argue that the South American Summer Monsoon was a significant influence on the area’s weather during the Last Glacial Maximum, as it is today. The weather systems from the continent’s Atlantic side provided much of the area’s precipitation and are represented in the chronology glacial advances, which allows the authors to tie their analysis into a larger picture of global weather patterns in the late Pleistocene.

Find the full text here.

Climate Change and the Bronze Age Transition in Northwestern China

A new dissertation in anthropology by Elizabeth Berger at UNC-Chapel Hill shows how culture and climate change combined to shape the changes in northwestern China’s human society during the Bronze Age transition of the first and second millennia BCE. As the climate became cooler and drier in northern Eurasia, human groups changed in uneven ways. Skeletal analyses of remains from northwestern China show that groups with Bronze Age subsistence systems seem to have better adapted to the colder, more arid climate, while groups with Iron Age subsistence systems suffered poorer health. But because the defining elements of these subsistence systems were not categorically changed over this period, Berger argues that the Bronze Age transition would be better described as “incremental adaptation” rather than a collapse, as it has been previously understood.

Find the full text here

CHN Summer Newsletter Published

Nicholas Cunigan, our newsletter editor, has published a special Spring and Summer 2017 issue of our Climate History Newsletter. You'll find podcast links, feature article summaries, calls for papers, conference updates, and our usual list of new scholarship. 

Download the issue by clicking here.

CALL FOR PAPERS | Asian Extremes: Climate, Meteorology and Disaster in History | 17-18 May 2018

The weather plays an often underestimated, yet vitally important role in human history. Climate and weather history are still considered emerging fields despite some precedent from the sciences and arguably, studies in this field have disproportionately favoured Northern Europe, in large part because of the greater availability and accessibility of records for this region. There are still many knowledge gaps for Asia, partly because of the paucity of records in comparison to Europe, because many archives have either been restricted or have only relatively recently been opened, but also because regional scholars have overly focused on teleological nationalistic explorations of the past.  The aim of this conference therefore is to explore the role of the weather in the history of Asia. It ties in with current historiographical trends that explore scientific history as a globally linked enterprise, one that crossed different national and imperial borders.

In this conference, we seek to gain a better understanding of the following themes:

• ·         Asian Extremes: Weather as a Driver of Change
• ·         Imperial Meteorology: A Global Science
• ·         Culture, Climate and Weather
• ·         Weather History and the Modern-Day: Integrating History and Science in the Anthropocene

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Submissions should include a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief biography including name, institutional affiliation, and email contact. Please note that only previously unpublished papers or those not already committed elsewhere can be accepted. The organizers plan to publish a special issue with selected papers presented in this conference. By participating in the conference you agree to participate in the future publication plans (special issue/journal) of the organizers. The organizers will provide hotel accommodation for three nights and a contribution towards airfare for accepted paper participants (one author per paper).

Please submit your proposal, using the provided proposal template to Dr Fiona Williamson at ariwfc@nus.edu.sg and Sharon at arios@nus.edu.sg by 17 October 2017. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 17 November 2017.

Will Climate Change Cause Conflict in the Arctic? Searching for Answers in the Past.

In article after article, academics, policy analysts, and journalists have told a similar story: climate change, by melting Arctic ice, is unlocking resources that could soon trigger war in the far north. They argue that the race to extract the vast reservoirs of oil and natural gas that lie under the vanishing ice – up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered fossil fuel reserves, by some estimates – will likely provoke hostilities between Russia, the United States, and other nations with claims to the bonanza. The overall failure of early drilling efforts in the Arctic, it seems, is of little consequence. 

Keep Reading

Sea Level Rise in Holocene Adriatic Linked to Increased Parasitic Activity

Photo Credit: Scientific Reports

Researchers have found that a rise in parasitic trematodes correlated with rises in sea level during the Holocene in Italy. Studying drill cores taken from the Po River delta in 2014, this group of researchers found an increased number of parasitic infestations in clams at times when sea levels were higher. Because the trematodes left no direct fossil remains, the study used empty pockets in clam shells produced by trematodes as a proxy for their prominence.

These researchers also link rising sea levels in the present and their findings over the course of the Holocene to an expected increased risk of parasites to humans in the future. Thus, the study finds that climate change may adverse impacting human internal health more quickly than previously thought. See the full article here.

Adapted from Sciencedaily