Categories
Conference

Tagung zur „Thüringischen Sintflut“ von 1613 in Apolda

(This German conference is about a flood in Apolda, Thuringia in 1613 and will be held 24-25 May 2013.)

 

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.

 

Categories
Climate History Network

ASEH Climate History sessions

(cross post from the Climate History Network)

 

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.
Categories
Climate History Network Resources

Teaching resource: 100 Views of Climate Change

(cross post from Climate History Network)

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.

Categories
Climate History Network

Study: Volcanic Eruptions Diminished Recent Warming

(cross-post from Climate History Network)

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.

Categories
Climate History Network

New Study: Multiproxy Reconstruction Offers Independent Confirmation of Global Warming

(cross-post from Climate History Network)

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.

Categories
Conference

ICHM at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine

At the iCHSTM conference this summer, 22-28 July, ICHM will have a day of sessions around “Gaining it / losing it/ regaining it(?) Knowledge production in climate science, status anxiety, and authority across disciplines”. For more information, please see the program guide online. According to the provisional programme, it is currently planned to take place Friday, July 26. For more information about iCHSTM, please visit the conference website at http://ichstm2013.com/.

Categories
Climate History Network

Conference Report: Climate and Weather – Science as Public Culture

(Cross-post from the Climate History Network)

From the 7th – 9th January, 2013 a diverse group of scholars met in Oxford for a conference on aspects of the communication of weather and climate from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Organised and hosted by the Maison Française D’Oxford in partnership with the Museum of the History of Science Oxford, the conference began with a reception at the Museum of the History of Science where attendees were treated to a private viewing of the exhibition, “Atmospheres: Investigating the Weather from Aristotle to Ozone.”

Categories
Opportunities

World Learning, International Honors Program – Traveling Faculty

Climate Change: Politics of Food, Energy and Water

Job Announcement: Traveling Faculty 2013 and 2014

 

The International Honors Program (IHP), a program of World Learning/School for International Training, offers international, comparative study abroad programs for university students. We are currently seeking six traveling faculty members to join an interdisciplinary team of faculty, fellows, and host country coordinators for IHPs Climate Change: Politics of Food, Water, and Energy program.

We seek three traveling faculty to travel fulltime and teach during the Fall semester of 2013 and three to do the same in the Spring semester of 2014. (Faculty can work both semesters if they wish, or hire on for just one semester per year, but the work and the travel that goes with it is very demanding; thus back to back semesters is not advised.)

Each four-month program will take approximately 30 to 35 students from top-tier U.S. colleges and universities to three countries to do inter-disciplinary research from a comparative perspective.

Categories
Opportunities

The History of Climate Change and the Future of Global Governance

Department of History, Columbia University
May-August 2013

 

The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative (HGSI) seeks talented undergraduate and graduate students for its 2013 seminar on the History of Climate Change and the Future of Global Governance.

 

HGSI is a research program that explores how the world community has responded to planetary threats to derive lessons that will help us take on the challenges of the present and the future. Each summer, a select group of students from across the nation comes to Columbia University for three months to work with leading scholars and policymakers. This year’s initiative hopes to train a new generation of researchers and leaders who understand both the development of climate science and the changing nature of world politics.

Categories
Conference

American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference
Communicating Climate Science: A Historic Look to the Future
June 8-13, 2013, Snow Mountain Ranch, Granby, CO, USA

 

The AGU Chapman Conference (AGUCC) will focus on communication about climate science to all sectors of society.  The Climate Change Community must move forward on multiple pathways to convey climate change research, mitigation and adaptation plans and policies and technologies to policy makers, planners, and society at all levels.  As climate science has developed over time, there has been a significant shift in relations between the science and political aspects thereof; where previously the development of the science was exclusively prioritized, now the focus lies in communicating the science to society. It is imperative that we determine an appropriate balance between these two elements, ensuring that neither is too shallow or deep.