Climate and Society Bibliography
Listed below is a selection of books, articles and links relevant to historical climatology. These resources can be broadly split into two groups: those dealing primarily with climatic reconstructions, which trend heavily into scientific jargon, and those also or entirely concerned with the complex interactions between (past) societies and climatic fluctuations. This is a "climate and society" bibliography - rather than a historical climatology bibliography - because I believe that any examination into the relationship between past climates and societies is either consciously or unconsciously inspired by the current reality of global warming. With that in mind I've included a small sampling of works that deal with today's climate crisis. If you have any suggestions please contact me.
Books:
Behringer, Wolfgang. A Cultural History of Climate. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010.
Brown, Neville. History and Climate Change: A Eurocentric perspective. London: Routledge, 2001.
Carey, Mark. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Climatic trends and anomalies in Europe 1675-1715. Edited by Burkhard Frenzel. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1994.
European climate reconstructed from documentary data: methods and results. Edited by Buckhard Frenzel. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1992.
Fagan, Brian M. The Little Ice Age: how climate made history, 1300-1850. Boulder: Basic Books, 2000.
Fagan, Brian M. The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
Glaser, Rüdiger. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas. 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen.
Grove, Jean M. Little Ice Ages: Ancient and Modern. London: Routledge, 2004.
History and Climate: Memories of the Future? Edited by P.D. Jones et. al. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001.
Ladurie, Emmanuel le Roy. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971.
Lamb, Hubert. Climate, History, and the Modern World: Second Edition. London: Routledge, 1995.
Lamb, Hubert. Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles, and Northwest Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Lamb, Hubert. The English Climate: Second Edition. London: English Universities Press, 1964.
Pearce, Fred. Climate and Man: From the Ice Ages to the Global Greenhouse. London: Vision Books, 1989.
Richards, John F. The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
White, Sam.
Articles:
Bauernfeind, W., and U. Woitek, "The Influence of Climatic Change on Price Fluctuations in Germany during the 16th Century Price Revolution," Climatic Change 43:1 (1999): 303-322.
Behringer, Wolfgang. "Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities," Climatic Change 43:1 (1999): 335-351.
Brazdil, Rudolf, Pfister, Christian, et al. "Historical Climatology in Europe - the State of the Art" Climatic Change 70 (2005): 363 - 430.
Briffa, K. R. et al. "European Tree Rings and Climate in the 16th Century," Climatic Change 43:1 (1999): 151-168.
Büntgen, Ulf et. al. "2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility," Science, published online 13 January 2011 .
Gergis, Joëlle et. al. “The Influence of Climate on the First European Settlement of Australia: A Comparison of Weather Journals, Documentary Data and Palaeoclimate Records, 1788–1793.” Environmental History 15:3 (2010): 485-50.
Lansberg, H.E. “Past Climates from Unexploited Written Sources.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, No. 10 (1980): 631-42.
Oliver, J. and J.A. Kington, 'The Usefulness of Ships’ Logbooks in the Synoptic Analysis of Past Climates’, Weather, 25 (1970): 520-27.
Pfister, Christian. “Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” The Medieval History Journal 10, 1&2 (2007): 33-73.
Pfister, Christian, and Rudolf Brázdil, "Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and its Social Dimension: A Synthesis," Climatic Change 43:1 (1999): 5-53.
Pfister, Christian and Rudolf Brázdil. “Social vulnerability to climate in the ‘Little Ice Age’: an example from Central Europe in the early 1770s.”
Sager, Ingrid D. TheLittleIceAgeand 17th CenturyDutchLandscapePainting, a Study on the Impact of Climate onArt. Masters Abstracts International 2007 45(1): 6. MA1438002 California State U, Dominguez Hills 2006. 117 pp.
Wheeler, Dennis. “British Naval Logbooks from the Late Seventeenth Century: New climatic information from old sources.” History of Meteorology 2 (2005): 133-146.
Wheeler, Dennis. “Understanding Seventeenth-Century Ships’ Logbooks: An Exercise in Historical Climatology.” Journal for Maritime Research (2004): 1-16.
Climatic Reconstructions:
Camuffo, D. “Freezing of the Venetian lagoon since the 9th century A.D. in comparison to the climate of western Europe and England.”
De Kraker, Adriaan. Reconstruction of Storm Frequency in the North Sea Area of the Preindustrial Period, 1400-1625 and the Connection with Reconstructed Time Series of Temperatures, History of Meteorology 2, 51-69, 2005.
Dobrovolny, Petr et. al. Monthly, seasonal and annual temperature reconstructions for Central Europe derived from documentary evidence and instrumental records since AD 1500. Climatic Change 101 (2010): 69–107.
Glaser, Rüdiger and Gerhard Koslowski. “Reconstruction of the Ice Winter Severity since 1701 in the Western Baltic.” Climatic Change 31: 79-98, 1995.
Glaser, Rüdiger and Gerhard Koslowski. “Variations in reconstructed ice winter severity in the western Baltic from 1501 to 1995, and their implications for the North Atlantic Oscillation.” Climatic Change 41 (1999): 175–191.
Gordon Manley, “Central England Temperatures: Monthly Means 1659 to 1973” The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 100 (1974): 389-405.
Labrijn, A. The climate of the Netherlands during the last two and a half centuries. KNMI Mededelingenen Verhandelingen 49 (1945).
Leijonhufvud L, Wilson R, Moberg A. "Documentary data as proxy variables for Stockholm late winter to early spring temperatures in the 18th and 19th centuries." Holocene 18 (2010): 333–343.
Leijonhufvud L. et. al. "Five centuries of winter/spring temperatures in Stockholm reconstructed from documentary evidence and instrumental observations." Climatic Change (2009).
Luterbacher, J., C. Schmutz, D. Gyalistras, E. Xoplaki, and H. Wanner (1999), “Reconstruction of Monthly NAO and EU Indices Back to AD 1675,” Geophys. Res. Lett., 26 (17): 2745–2748.
Raible, Christoph C. “Climate variability - observations, reconstructions, and model simulations for the Atlantic-European and Alpine region from 1500–2100 AD.” Climatic Change 79 (2006): 9–29.
Shabalova, M.V., and A.F.V. van Engelen, “Evaluation of a reconstruction of temperature in the Low Countries AD 764-1998.” Climatic Change (2000).
Van den Dool, H. M., H. J. Krijnen and C. J. E. Schuurmans, “Average winter temperatures at De Bilt (the Netherlands) 1634-1977,” Climatic Change, vol. 1, pp. 319-30, Dordrecht, Reidel.
