A new article in the journal Nature coins a new term – the “History of Climate and Society” (HCS) – to refer to the truly interdisciplinary study of the past impacts of climate change on human populations. It offers a detailed critique of the field as it has been pursued to date, presents a new research framework for HCS scholars, and shows how the application of that framework can permit new scholarship into the resilience and adaptability of populations that faced the modest, pre-industrial climate changes of the past 2,000 years. The article identifies five “pathways” that allowed populations to endure and even exploit these changes, and suggests that those pathways can help us prepare for the future.
At HistoricalClimatology.com, Dagomar Degroot, lead author of the article, describes how and why he developed the project. A new episode of our podcast, Climate History, features a conversation between co-authors Degroot and Emma Moesswilde that explores the significance of the article for understandings of both the past and the future.
Climate History Network