Past Climate Variability Through Europe And Africa

This book focuses on two complementary time-scales, the Holocene (approximately the last 11,500 years) and the last glacial-interglacial cycle (approximately the last 130,000 years) to synthesize evidence of climate variability at the regional and continental scale across Europe and Africa. This is the first examination of historical climate variations at such a scale, and thus sets a benchmark for future research.

Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies. This book explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds, focusing on the ancient economies of western Eurasia and northern Africa from the fourth millennium BCE up to the end of the first millennium CE. This book contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society from various backgrounds. The chronological boundaries of the book are set by the emergence of complex societies in the Neolithic on the one end and the rise of early-modern states in global political and economic exchange on the other. In order to stimulate comparison across the boundaries of modern periodization, this book ends with demography and climate change in early-modern and modern Italy, a society whose empirical data allows the kind of statistical analysis that is impossible for ancient societies. The book highlights the role of human agency, and the complex interactions between the natural environment and the socio-cultural, political, demographic, and economic infrastructure of any given society. It is intended for a wide audience of scholars and students in ancient economic history, specifically Rome and Late Antiquity.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, no environmental issue is of such truly global magnitude as the issue of climate change. The poorer, developing countries are the least equipped to adapt to the potential effects of climate change, although most of them have played an insignificant role in causing it. African countries are amongst the poorest of the developing countries. This book presents the issues of most relevance to Africa, such as past and present climate, desertification, biomass burning and its implications for atmospheric chemistry and climate, energy generation, sea-level rise, ENSO-induced drought and flood, adaptation, disaster risk reduction, the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol (especially the Clean Development Mechanism), capacity-building, and sustainable development. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of these and many other issues, with chapters by the leading experts from a range of disciplines. Climate Change and Africa will prove to be an invaluable reference for all researchers and policy makers with an interest in climate change and Africa.

This multi-authored book provides an updated description of climate variability in the Mediterranean basin, focusing on decadal and centennial time scales and on the results available on the impact of future emission scenarios at regional scale. The authors describs both local physical processes responsible for these variability - such as changes in the surface properties and land use- and globalprocesses - such as changes in the large scale atmospheric circulation associated to global warming, NAO, tropical monsoon and ENSO. Regional climate change issues are also addressed. Mediterranean Climate Variability aims to review the research on this region and to provide at the same time both an introduction and a reference for researchers. It covers topics typical of Climatology, Climate history, Meteorology, Oceanography, Environmental Science but the information here provided would also be useful for research in agriculture, social and economic studies. It is addressed to scientists and students interested in the Mediterranean climate and environment. Some topics have interesting connections to nearby regions: Northern Atlantic, West Africa, central and Eastern Europe. Each chapter will contain a summary meant to provide information to policy makers, researchers from other fields, and in general to a wide audience without a technical expertise on climate. * Provides an updated analysis of the Mediterranean climate features and guidelines for future research * Considers both oceanographic and atmospheric aspects * Analyzes the Mediterranean climate in a global perspective

In the context of growing global concerns about climate change, this book presents a regional and sub-continental synthesis of pastoralists' responses to past environmental changes and reflects on the lessons for current and future environmental challenges. Drawing from rock art, archaeology, paleoecological data, trade, ancient hydrological technology, vegetation, social memory and historical documentation, this book creates detailed reconstructions of past climate change adaptations across Sahelian Africa. It evaluates the present and future challenges to climate change adaptation in the region in terms of social memory, rainfall variability, environmental change and armed conflicts and examines the ways in which governance and policy drivers may undermine pastoralists’ adaptive strategies. The book’s scope covers the Red Sea coast, Somaliland, Somalia, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, part of the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea, areas where past climate change has been extreme and future change makes it vital to understand the dynamics of adaptation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental history, human ecology, geography, climate change, environment studies, development studies, pastoralism, anthropology and African studies.

Climate change is a major challenge for us all, but for African countries it represents a particular threat. This book outlines current thinking and evidence and the impact such change will have on Africa's development prospects. Global warming above the level of two degrees Celsius would be enormously damaging for poorer parts of the world, leading to crises with crops, livestock, water supplies and coastal areas. Within Africa, it's likely to be the continent's poorest people who are hit hardest. In this accessible and authoritative introduction to an often-overlooked aspect of the environment, Camilla Toulmin uses case studies to look at issues ranging from natural disasters to biofuels, and from conflict to the oil industry. Finally, the book addresses what future there might be for Africa in a carbon-constrained world.

A richly illustrated book on the history of climate change in Europe. Two perspectives, one unique book: two leading experts, a historian and a climatologist, co-author a new standard work on climate history. An overview of the connection between climatic and social developments over the last 1000 years. For the first time, a historian and a climatologist with knowledge of climate history have worked closely together to create a unique book, combining climate reconstructions based on documented data in their human-historical context with temporally highly resolved analyses of climate and glaciers. "Here we can clearly see how changes in climate affected the environment and people of Europe over many centuries, with important lessons for the future. A wonderfully engaging and well-documented account by two of Europe's leading climate scientists." Prof. Dr. Raymond Bradley, Director, Climate System Research Center, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA) "This unique book provides new fascinating insights into the interaction of past climate and society in Europe. It can be highly recommended to climatologists, historians and geoscientists, but also to students and the broad public." Prof. Dr. Rudolf Brázdil, Department of Geography, Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic) "The authors offer a truly interdisciplinary combination of history and science in order to explore the complex relationships of climate and society over the past millennium. They demonstrate convincingly that climate change is nothing new while at the same time revealing the character of the unprecedented climatic epoch mankind now faces." Prof. Dr. Jan de Vries, Professor Emeritus of History and Economics, University of California, Berkeley (USA) Christian Pfister is Professor Emeritus of Economic, Social and Environmental History at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He was founding president of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH). Heinz Wanner is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Climatology. He was co-chair of the international Past Global Changes (PAGES) project and a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Both scientists work at the renowned Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern.

Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity brings together scientific, archaeological and historical evidence on the interplay of social change and environmental phenomena at the end of Antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages, ca. 300-800 AD.

This volume provides an up to date overview of climate variability during the 20th century in the context of natural and anthropogenic variability. It compiles a number of contributions to a workshop held in Gwatt, Switzerland, in July 2006 dealing with different aspects of climate change, variability, and extremes during the past 100 years. The individual contributions cover a broad range of topics. The volume fills a gap in this exciting field of research.