Samuel White

Research project

Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies

Project summary

As a fellow of the “Science Meets Humanities” Programme, I would pursue ongoing work to coordinate and improve methods in historical climate reconstruction from human records. This project is being conducted through the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies (CRIAS) working group. Personal documents, archival materials, early instrumental observations, and artefacts such as flood markers—the “archives of societies”—serve a unique role in understanding climatic variability and change. They provide precise climate and weather information from annual to daily resolution at defined locations for all seasons as well as their societal impacts, perceptions and reactions. Nevertheless, using the archives of societies poses significant challenges. Their information is neither as continuous nor homogenous as that provided by natural proxies. They require careful interpretation to overcome problems of subjectivity and errors of recording and transmission. Historical climatologists have independently developed methods to address these problems but have not yet coordinated global best practices in source interpretation and production of data for use by paleoclimatologists and modelers. The PAGES CRIAS working group aims to address these challenges through a series of workshops and publications focused on methodological studies and innovations. As a resident of Iméra I could focus on PAGES CRIAS work, while bringing in researchers from the Aix-Marseille community into the project.