Climate, History and the Modern WorldRoutledge, 26 sep. 2002 - 464 sidor We live in a world that is increasingly vulnerable to climatic shocks - affecting agriculture and industry, government and international trade, not to mention human health and happiness. Serious anxieties have been aroused by respected scientists warning of dire perils that could result from upsets of the climatic regime. In this internationally acclaimed book, Emeritus Professor Hubert Lamb examines what we know about climate, how the past record of climate can be reconstructed, the causes of climatic variation, and its impact on human affairs now and in the historical and prehistoric past. This 2nd Edition includes a new preface and postscript reviewing the wealth of literature to emerge in recent years, and discusses implications for a deeper understanding of the problems of future climatic fluctuations and forecasting. |
Innehåll
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
THE CLIMATE PROBLEM | 8 |
Early writing about climate and history | 9 |
Climate viewed as constant | 10 |
The effect on research and the development of knowledge | 12 |
The development of climate | 21 |
HOW CLIMATE WORKS | 23 |
The heat supply | 24 |
Effects in Scotland | 219 |
Scandinavia and Finland | 224 |
Fisheries and the seafaring nations of northern Europe | 227 |
Harvests and health in England | 228 |
The variability of weather in the Little Ice Age | 229 |
Notable winters and summers in Europe | 230 |
Artists Impressions | 233 |
Southern Europe north Africa and India | 235 |
The worlds wind circulation | 27 |
Weather systems | 30 |
Transport of moisture and pollution by the winds | 35 |
Variations of the wind circulation | 36 |
Worldwide relationships of weather variations | 38 |
Convection and temperature change with height | 39 |
Tornadoes | 40 |
Tropical storms typhoons | 42 |
Seasonal changes | 44 |
distribution seasonal changes monsoons | 46 |
HOW CLIMATE COMES TO FLUCTUATE AND CHANGE | 52 |
Changes in the ocean | 60 |
More basic matters | 62 |
Astronomical cycles affecting the heat supply | 66 |
Other cycles | 68 |
Cycles in the suns activity | 69 |
The heating pattern and reconstruction of past climates | 70 |
HOW WE CAN RECONSTRUCT THE PAST RECORD OF CLIMATE | 74 |
Other records of past climates | 80 |
Grain prices records | 89 |
Radiocarbon and its role in dating evidence | 93 |
Pollen analysis and vegetation history | 95 |
The postglacial record and evidence from beetles | 96 |
Archaeology | 98 |
Ocean bed deposits | 100 |
Climate and history | 109 |
CLIMATE AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY | 111 |
The end of the ice age world | 114 |
The rising sea level and its effects | 115 |
Human migrations | 116 |
The beginnings of agriculture and the bending of animals | 119 |
The shift of the segregation zones and their faunas the ranges of birds and of fish in the sea | 121 |
the moist Sahara and its ending contemporary changes in Europe and North America | 122 |
IN THE TIMES OF THE EARLY CIVILIZATIONS | 125 |
The Indus valley and its civilization | 130 |
Ancient China | 132 |
TIMES OF DISTURBANCE AND DECLINE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD | 139 |
Records of the downturn of climate | 140 |
Effects on European lake settlements and mining in the mountains | 146 |
Effects in northern lands | 147 |
Effects in the eastern Mediterranean and Hither Asia | 148 |
Effects in China | 150 |
Details from northwest Europe | 152 |
The time of birth of great religions | 154 |
ROMAN TIMES AND AFTER | 156 |
times of trade and of migrations | 159 |
Critical disease epidemics | 162 |
The climatic sequence in Europe through the first millennium AD | 165 |
The sequence in the Mediterranean and farther south | 168 |
Central America and southeast Asia | 169 |
THROUGH VIKING TIMES TO THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES | 171 |
The medieval sequence in northern Europe and the northern Atlantic | 172 |
The peak of medieval warmth in Europe | 177 |
The contemporary scene in the Mediterranean eastern Europe and Asia | 182 |
Effects on sea level and lowlying coasts | 185 |
DECLINE AGAIN IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES | 187 |
storms | 191 |
Cooling and wetness in early fourteenthcentury Europe | 195 |
A time of diseases | 199 |
desertion of farms and village settlements | 200 |
Norway Denmark Scotland | 202 |
Central southern and eastern Europe | 206 |
Developments in Africa and India | 207 |
how the preEuropean cultures were affected | 209 |
THE LITTLE ICE AGE BACKGROUND TO THE HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES | 211 |
1500s to 1800s | 212 |
Iceland and the Arctic fringe | 216 |
Great storms and coastal floods in Europe | 217 |
The Far East | 236 |
North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries | 240 |
THE RECOVERY 1700 TO AROUND 1950 | 242 |
Warming sets in erratically | 243 |
Developments in agriculture | 245 |
Further climate disturbance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries | 246 |
Charles Dickens and the artists as climate reporters | 249 |
Towards the midnineteenth century and the beginnings of the great recession of the glaciers | 251 |
The Irish potato famine | 252 |
Midnineteenth century in the United States | 253 |
Towards the end of the century | 254 |
The twentiethcentury warmth | 260 |
Climate in the modern world and questions over the future | 265 |
CLIMATE SINCE 1950 | 267 |
Cooling in the Arctic | 271 |
world temperature | 273 |
Effects on rainfall | 275 |
Effects on glaciers icesheets and sea level | 278 |
Monitoring the developments of world climate | 279 |
THE IMPACT OF CLIMATIC DEVELOPMENTS ON HUMAN AFFAIRS AND HUMAN HISTORY | 283 |
Impacts of the first order | 286 |
More complex consequences | 288 |
Effects on grain harvests | 292 |
Details from Switzerland in the eighteenth century | 296 |
The time around 1816 | 298 |
1879 and the decline of British agriculture | 300 |
The experience of 1972 | 306 |
Technology climate and food supply | 308 |
Climate and disease outbreaks | 311 |
The impacts of flooding and bitter winters | 314 |
Other aspects | 316 |
THE CAUSES OF CLIMATES FLUCTUATIONS AND CHANGES | 319 |
Variations of the sun | 320 |
Variations in the Earths orbit | 322 |
Volcanic dust in the atmosphere | 323 |
Variations of the circulation and heat distribution in the atmosphere and oceans | 327 |
Impacts on the climate of various human activities | 329 |
Devices to alter the climate and environment | 330 |
The increase of carbon dioxide | 333 |
Other effluents from human activities | 336 |
The net effect | 337 |
Effects in industrial and urban areas | 340 |
FORECASTING | 346 |
Longerterm forecasting | 347 |
Clusters of like years | 349 |
The development of climate | 351 |
Forecasts of the natural climate | 354 |
Possible effects of human activity and policy decisions | 359 |
Concluding summary | 367 |
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? | 369 |
Approaches to climate forecasting and their usefulness | 371 |
International efforts needed to improve knowledge | 374 |
The lessons of history | 376 |
The need for flexibility diversification and margins of safety in agriculture and energy policy | 377 |
watchfulness understanding and realism | 380 |
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND THE OUTLOOK | 383 |
The unrelenting growth of the worlds human population | 384 |
The more or less worldwide warmth of the twentieth century exceeding that of most recent centuries | 385 |
The developing ozone holes | 386 |
Pollution | 387 |
Windiness and storms | 388 |
Recurring oscillations in largescale weather patterns | 390 |
Notes | 393 |
| 412 | |
Additional further reading for the second edition | 413 |
| 414 | |
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