A recent article published in Global Environmental Change reviews the approaches that researchers have taken to historical climatology. Surveying major trends in the field over the past 25 years, it also argues that historical records have thus far been an underexploited tool and can provide a rich baseline for understanding the processes of adaptation. Historical analysis, the authors argue, can also draw attention to how institutional and individual agency and the uneven distribution of power shaped past responses to climate change. The article cautions that this power relationship is sometimes naturalized by the way that “adaptation” has been used in existing literature, and that historical climatologists need to draw attention to power relationships or else risk reproducing them. On the whole, the article should be a useful reference and teaching tool.
Read the article here
