Speakers include John Kettley (freelance broadcaster and weather consultant), Stephen Burt (author of The Weather Observer’s Handbook), Trevor Harley (University of Dundee and ‘psychometeorologist’), Cerys Jones (University of Aberystwyth) and Lorna Hughes (University of Wales), who will reflect on their experiences in engagement through the broadcast media, in print, and online, alongside others with direct connections to Gordon Manley and his work; John Adamson (Moor House National Nature Reserve), and Frank Oldfield (Emeritus Professor, University of Liverpool).

The event will be held at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), in London, on Tuesday 27th August 2013, between 10:00am and 4:30pm. It is timed just ahead of the RGS-IBG Annual Conference which begins on Wednesday 28th August.

The day is free to attend and lunch and refreshments will be provided. There are a limited number of places available so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to attend. It would be helpful if you could send a brief outline of your research interests/projects with your contact details and institutional affiliation to lucy.veale@nottingham.ac.uk

We look forward to hearing from you,

Lucy Veale and Georgina Endfield (University of Nottingham)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MqY0y1rt8&feature=youtu.be

“This presentation tells the story of the emergence of the new interdisciplinary field of atmospheric science in the twentieth century as shaped by the influences of multiple technologies. It does so from the perspective of MIT-trained meteorologist Harry Wexler (1911-1962), an American student of the Bergen School of air mass analysis, head of research in the US Weather Bureau, and one of the most influential meteorologists of the twentieth century, whose career spanned the middle decades of the twentieth century…By telling the story through Wexler’s eyes, a more personal story can be told.”

Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California

July 6 – 10, 2014

Conference Themes:
(1) Doing the History of the Earth Sciences: What, Why, and How?
and (2) California’s Place in the History of the Earth Sciences

In 1994, the Geological Society of America hosted the Penrose Conference, “From the Inside and the Outside: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of the Earth Sciences.” The focus of that meeting was on how practicing scientists (“insiders”) and professional historians (“outsiders”) approached research in our field. Twenty years later, it is fitting to ask where we stand presently on fundamental questions about scholarly inquiry into the development of the geosciences.

What is properly encompassed within historical studies of the earth sciences? How is the domain of investigation defined? Where do its boundaries lie?

Why should the history of the earth sciences be investigated and analyzed? What purposes are served by such historical examination? Who should care?

How should research on history of the geosciences be conducted? How should the results be formulated? How can constructive dialogue between scientists and historians be promoted? How can our research be better shared with colleagues and with the public at large?

Since the meeting will be held in California, along with the conference’s principal theme a second theme will be “California’s Place in the History of the Earth Sciences.”

The Asilomar Conference Grounds provide an attractive and congenial setting for extensive interaction among meeting participants, with meals taken in common at the center’s dining hall (learn more at http://www.visitasilomar.com). The meeting sessions and mid-meeting excursions will occupy four days: Monday, 7 July through Thursday, 10 July 2014. We plan to have the mid-meeting excursions (localities in the vicinity of the Monterey Peninsula) on Wednesday the 9th. The meeting will open with a reception and dinner Sunday evening, 6 July.

Membership in INHIGEO or GSA is not a prerequisite for participation in the meeting or for a place as a presenter in the meeting program. The organizers strongly encourage attendance and participation by everyone taking an interest in the conference. For those who may need this encouragement, it should be said that research into any area of the history of the geosciences could be organized so as to address the programmatic, historiographical, and methodological issues stated in the main conference theme.

A post-meeting historical field trip, limited to about 30 participants, is being planned for 11 – 16 July. The itinerary includes Yosemite National Park and localities along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, as well as sites from the mid-19th-century California Gold Rush.

Further information is available at http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/INHIGEO2014/ and at http://www.inhigeo.org/coming-symposia or contact Kenneth L. Taylor, University of Oklahoma (ktaylor@ou.edu).

To register, contact Ellie Whittles (e.c.whittles@durham.ac.uk).

Organisers: Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) and Katherine E. Russo  (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale)

Partners: COST Action IS1101 Climate change and migration; Institute for Advanced Studies (Durham University); Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Am 29. Mai 1613 wurden Teile Thüringens, darunter der Raum Weimar/ Apolda, von schweren Unwettern und Überschwemmungen heimgesucht. Das auch als „Thüringische Sintflut“ bezeichnete Ereignis forderte Hunderte Todesopfer und verursachte beispielsweise an der Ilm und Magdel enorme Sachschäden. Im Rahmen einer Tagung soll an den 400. Jahrestag dieser Katastrophe erinnert werden. Die Veranstaltung findet am 24. und 25. Mai 2013 in Apolda statt.

Am ersten Tag werden ab 9 Uhr im Stadthaus (Raum 36) Fachvorträge gehalten. Dabei gehen die Referenten nicht nur auf das Geschehen vom Mai 1613 ein, sondern diskutieren auch über aktuelle Aspekte der Hochwasserwarnung und Hochwasservorsorge. Am Samstag, 25. Mai, ist ab 10.45 Uhr eine Busexkursion an die Ilm geplant. Besichtigt werden u. a. alte Hochwasserinschriften sowie ingenieurtechnische Anlagen am Fluss.

Sowohl zur den Fachvorträgen am 24. Mai als auch zur Busexkursion an die Ilm am 25. Mai sind interessierte Bürger herzlich eingeladen. Für die Teilnahme sind bis zum 30. April 2013 eine verbindliche schriftliche Anmeldung sowie die Vorauszahlung von 15 Euro (Tagungsgebühr) zuzüglich 6 Euro (bei Teilnahme an der Busexkursion) notwendig.

Nähere Informationen zum Tagungsprogramm und zu den organisatorischen Details können bei der Geschäftsstelle der Deutschen Wasserhistorischen Gesellschaft (DWhG) e. V. erfragt werden (Fax: 02241  128 109, E-Mail: basche@wahnbach.de).

Im Internet finden sich Angaben zur Tagung sowie das Anmeldeformular unter www.dwhg-ev.de.

At the American Society for Environmental History in Toronto, there will be a number of paper and panels on climate including:

• Climate history breakfast to discuss initiatives in this growing field of environmental history.  It will meet on the morning of Thursday, April 4, 7:15am in the Jasper Room.
• “East Meets West: Middle Eastern Environments and Western Eyes” (Panel 4-E), chaired by Sam White of Oberlin College. Paper presentations will be “East, West, and American Conversationism” by David Schorr of Tel Aviv University; “The Science of Sand: The East in Nineteenth Century European Climatology” by Philipp Lehmann of Harvard University; and “Getting the Goat: Disturbing Creatures and Attempts to Change the East” by Tamar Novick of Univeristy of Pennsylvania.
• “Desert Debates: Geology, Climate Change, and Environmental Engineering in the Nineteenth Century” (Panel 6-G), chaired by Kristine C. Halper of Florida State University. Paper presentations will be “Mapping the Desert Sublime “by Erik Altenbernd of UC Irvine, “Debating Climate Change in Nineteenth Century America” by Lawrence Culver of Utah State University and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and “The Threat of the Desert: European Debates on Climate Change in the late Nineteenth Century” by Philipp Lehmann of Harvard University.
• “Early Modern Waterways, Economies and States Under Climatic Stress of the Maunder Minimum ca. 1670-1730” (Panel 9-J), chaired by Richard Hoffmann of York University. Paper presentations will be “Colonial Cataclysms: Hydrological Responses to Climate Change and Land Use in two Major Basins in Central Mexico, 1680-1780” by Bradley Skopyk of Universidad Autónoma de México, “Sandbars, Ice Floes and Rebels on Horseback: How the Changing Danube Shape Early Modern Warfare” by Verena Winiwarter of Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt-Graz-Wien, and “Water, Weather and Transportation in the Dutch Republic 1650-1750” by Dagomar Degroot of York University.
• “New Perspectives on American Agricultures” (Panel 6-H), chaired by Boyd Cothran of York University, with the paper “Landscapes of Time: Track Seasonal and Climatic Change in Agriculture, 1790-1860” by Emily Pawley of Dickinson University
• “Genealogies of Risk: Perspectives on the Construction of Environmental Risk in North America, Europe and Asia” (Panel 7-F) chaired by Sam Temple of the University of Oklahoma, with “Changes in the Air: Climatic Engineering and Environmental Risk in Nineteenth Century France and French Empire” by Sam Temple of the University of Oklahoma.

For more information about meetings, and for links, updates, and publications in climate history, please visit: http://climatehistorynetwork.com

100 Views of Climate Change is a website for climate-change education and outreach.  This site was recently reorganized and includes annotations and links to videos, podcasts, books, articles, essays, and websites that convey high-quality information in clear and appealing ways to non-specialist adults, including college-level students, their teachers, and the interested public. The range is multidisciplinary, ranging from climate science to ecology, agriculture to ethics, communication to policy, economics to energy.

Average global temperatures fluctuate in response to many different influences, and while some of these “forcings” are now affected by humans, others are shaped entirely by natural causes. Articles on this website have considered whether sulfur released into the atmosphere by volcanic eruptions stimulated the prolonged cooling of the so-called Little Ice Age in the centuries before 1850. Deposited in the stratosphere, volcanic sulfur dioxide interacts with other chemicals to form sulfuric acid and water, which in turn reflects solar radiation. Other articles on the site have introduced research revealing that the reflective properties of man made aerosol pollution in the twentieth century likely sheltered swaths of North America and, later, parts of China from the influence of global warming. Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a new study by lead author Ryan Neely explores how these very different influences have recently interacted with the most important forcing agent of our time: the rapid rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases caused by human activity.

The article D.M. Anderson et al., “Global Warming in an Independent Record of the Past 130 Years,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, uses an index of 173 temperature-sensitive proxies to reconstruct global temperatures going back to 1880, and a smaller index of 67 proxies to extend the record back to 1730.  The results strongly mirror those of the instrumental record, with clear indications of accelerating warming in the 20th century.  The study notes that “The upward trend appears to begin in the early 19th century but the year-to-year variability is large and the 1730-1929 trend is small.”

Of course, for climate historians the study also serves as a nice confirmation of the validity of proxies in historical climate reconstruction.  The broad Paleo Index used in the study actually shows much stronger correlation with the instrumental record than single, local proxies tend to do.