Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:22:45.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Lessons of Climatic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Reid A. Bryson
Reid A. Bryson
Affiliation:
Professor of Meteorology and Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1225 West Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studies of past climates show unequivocally what can happen to our atmospheric environment. From climatic history we can learn several very specific lessons.

The climate can change rapidly. Major climatic changes, such as the change from glacial to non-glacial conditions, can occur in a few centuries, even though the adjustment of biota and the wasting of continental ice-sheets may take longer. Smaller changes may take only decades.

Changed climatic states may persist for centuries or millennia. While the climatic excursion of this century appears to have lasted half-a-century or so, the ‘little ice-age’ was at least three centuries long (roughly 1550–1850 A.D.), a North American drought period lasted two centuries, and there was a monsoon failure of seven centuries. These have all been recorded in the evidence of Nature.

Climatic changes may occur in different senses in different parts of the world. This paper has outlined several cases where cooling in the sub-Arctic was associated with reduced rainfall or increased frequency of failure of the monsoon, and a case in which drought in North America was concomitant with wet weather in western Europe.

The climate we think of as normal is quite abnormal by the standards of the past few centuries, and the magnitude of the change since 1945 is significant by comparison with similar changes in the past.

Combining the nature of the recent climatic change with the present narrow margin of world food-grain reserves, an urgent need to consider and react to the possibility of continued climatic variation is indicated.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1975 , pp. 163 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asakura, Tadashi (1972). [Unusual Weather and Environmental Pollution.–in Japanese.] Kyoritsu Shuppan, Tokyo: iv + 212 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Bergthorsson, Pall (1962). Paper presented at the National Center for Atmospheric Research-Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories Conference on the Climate of the 11th and 16th Centuries, Aspen, Colorado, 16–24 06 1962: 23 pp.Google Scholar
Bryson, Reid A. (1966). Airmasses, streamlines, and the boreal forest. Geogr. Bull. (Canada), 8, pp. 228–69.Google Scholar
Bryson, Reid A. (1973). World food prospects and climatic change. Testimony before joint meeting of the U.S. Senate Subcommittees on Foreign Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Production, Marketing, and Stabilization of Prices (18 October 1973). Also, Hearings, 93rd Congress, First Session, 17–18 October 1973. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1974 (24–799), pp. 119–40.Google Scholar
Bryson, Reid A. (1974). A perspective on climatic change. Science, 184, pp. 753–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bryson, Reid A. & Baerreis, D. A. (1968). Climatic change and the Mill Creek culture of Iowa. Part 1, Ch. 1, Introduction and Project Summary. Jour. Iowa Archeol. Soc., 15, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar
Bryson, Reid A., Lamb, H. H. & Donley, D. L. (1974). Drought and the decline of Mycenae. Antiquity, 48, pp. 46–50.Google Scholar
Geyh, Mebus A.. & Jakel, D. (1974). Late-glacial and Holocene climatic history of the Sahara Desert derived from a statistical assay of 14C dates. Paleogeogr., Paleoclimatol., Paleoecol., 15, pp. 205–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kukla, George J. & Kukla, H. J. (1974). Increased surface albedo in the northern hemisphere. Science, 183, p. 713.Google Scholar
Pettersen, O. (1914). Climatic Variations in Historic and Prehistoric Times. Goteborg, Sver. Hydrogr.-Biol. Skr., No. 5, 25 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodewald, Martin (1973). Der trend des Meerestemperatur in Nordatlantik. Beilage zur Berliner Wetterkarte des Instituts for Meteorologie der Freien Universitat Berlin, SO29/73, 6 pp.Google Scholar
Singh, Gurdip, Chopra, S. K. & Singh, A. B. (1973). Pollenrain from the vegetation of north-west India. New Phytol, 72, pp. 191–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, Gurdip, Joshi, R. D. & Singh, A. B. (1972). Stratigraphic and radiocarbon evidence for the age and development of three salt-lake deposits in Rajasthan, India. Quaternary Res., 2, pp. 496–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorenson, Curtis J., Knox, J. C., Larsen, J. A. & Bryson, R. A. (1971). Paleosols and the forest border in Keewatin. Quaternary Res., 1, pp. 468–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, Thompson III & Bryson, R. A. (1972). The late- and post-glacial sequence of climatic events in Wisconsin and east-central Minnesota: quantitative estimates derived from fossil pollen spectra by multivariate statistical analysis. Quaternary Res., 2, pp. 70–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendland, W. M. & Bryson, R. A. (1974). Dating climatic episodes of the Holocene. Quaternary Res., 4, pp. 9–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar