Category Archives: History

The inevitable climate catastrophe

Posted on June 3, 2013 | 686 Comments

by Judith Curry

What can we learn from climate of the 17th century about future climate catastrophes?

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Posted in Climate change impacts, History

Historic Variations in Arctic sea ice. Part II: 1920-1950

Posted on April 10, 2013 | 330 Comments

by Tony Brown

Satellite observations that provide an hour by hour picture of every part of the Arctic make it easy to forget that large areas of it had not even been even explored 80 years ago – let alone its ice extent minutely observed.  This paper explores the controversy surrounding the period 1920-1950, which was a period of substantial warming in the Arctic.

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Posted in History, Polar regions

Historical perspective on the Russian heat wave

Posted on January 14, 2012 | 160 Comments

by Paul Farquharson

From about the fifth century A.D. onwards,  the Western tradition of history writing preserves abundant descriptions of weather and climate phenomena in sources such as Chronicles,  Annals and Histories.  If this material is left out of our understanding and memory of climate,  then contemporary extreme events may be mistaken for unique or unprecedented events.

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Posted in History

Love your monsters

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 214 Comments

by Judith Curry

The Case for Modernization as the Road to Salvation

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Posted in History

The long, slow thaw?

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 334 Comments

by Tony Brown

A warming trend can be observed from 1659, the start date of Central England Temperature  (CET)- the oldest instrumental record in the world- to today.  It would be a notable coincidence if the warming started at the exact point that this record began. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct CET from its current start point, through the use of diverse historical records, to 1538, in order to see if the commencement of this centuries long warming trend can be identified from within this time frame.

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Posted in Data and observations, History

Climate crises: half a millennium ago

Posted on October 4, 2011 | 299 Comments

by Judith Curry

[A] key message within Gore’s Climate Reality Project was that our recent strange weather and accompanying social problems are inextricably linked to the climate crisis. And say what you will about Gore, that part seems increasingly true. What’s more, there’s nothing new about such cause-and-effect. According to a new study, climate change has played a significant role in several of the  crises of pre-industrial Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere over the course of the 300 years.

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Posted in History

America’s First Global Warming Debate

Posted on July 26, 2011 | 94 Comments

by Judith Curry

So, when do you think America’s first climate debate took place, and who were the participants?  Here is a hint:

As the tumultuous century was drawing to a close, the conservative Yale grad challenged the sitting vice president’s ideas about global warming. The vice president, a cerebral Southerner, was planning his own run for the presidency, and the fiery Connecticut native was eager to denounce the opposition party.

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Posted in History

Historic variations in sea levels. Part 1: From the Holocene to Romans

Posted on July 12, 2011 | 509 Comments

by Tony Brown

The IPCC AR4 projected sea level rise in 2100 to range from 18-59 cm, depending on  the emission scenario.  More recent projections are for a 1 m sea level rise in 2100 [here and here].  Apart from the issue of uncertainty and reliability of these future sea level projections, how do these magnitudes of sea level rise compare with historic variations in sea level rise?

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Posted in History