Climate history

The climate history documents the development, fluctuations and effects of the earth's climate both in geological time periods and in the epochs of the recent past. Depending on the time perspective, climate processes over a few decades up to a few hundred million years are analyzed. The sciences for studying the climate are paleoclimatology and historical climatology . The latter also records the various weather anomalies in historical times, which were caused, among other things, by violent volcanic eruptions .

Reliable and instrumentally determined temperature and climate data have only been available on a broader basis since the second half of the 19th century. For a long time, information about earlier periods was considered to be relatively uncertain, but can be increasingly better and more precisely substantiated. Traditionally, so-called climate proxies from natural archives such as tree rings , ice cores or pollen are used. In addition, a wide range of different isotope analyzes is used in research, the latest developments of which enable measurement accuracy that was unattainable until recently. The history of the climate is also important for the history of evolution .

Climate practices and measurement methods

There are a number of different investigation methods for reconstructing past climatic conditions. In the 19th century was based on geological climate witnesses as trough valleys , moraines or glacier cuts a long-lasting ice age with large-scale glaciations (then often called "Winter World" called) directly detected both in Europe and on other continents. Other climate archives that can be used to document earlier warm periods are, for example, the location and extent of prehistoric coral reefs or the analysis of certain sediments and sedimentary rocks that were formed under tropical conditions.

Clickable reconstructed temperature curve of the Phanerozoic (partly somewhat simplified), created on the basis of various proxy data . The information for 2050 and 2100 is based on the 5th assessment report by the IPCC, assuming an increasing carbon dioxide concentration according to the RCP8.5 scenario .

While historical climatology makes extensive use of written records, historical chronicles or archaeological artefacts , paleoclimatology uses classic detection methods such as dendrochronology (tree ring analysis), palynology (pollen analysis), stalactites and varven chronology (also known as band dating ), which are based on the evaluation of Deposits in still and flowing waters supports. In the course of advanced technical possibilities, more and more drill core samples from the deep sea and the polar ice sheets are being examined. In 2004, for example, an ice core with a total age of 900,000 years was recovered in the Antarctic .

In the last few decades different detection methods by means of isotope analysis have increasingly been used in paleoclimatology . A long common method is the use of the carbon - isotope ¹⁴ C to determine the age of organic materials. However, the ¹⁴ C method only covers a relatively narrow time range from 300 to a maximum of 57,000 years. On the other hand, temperature determination with the help of the oxygen isotopes ¹⁸ O / ¹⁶ O, for which fossil corals, foraminifera and freshwater sediments are particularly suitable , covers a time frame of several hundred million years . A number of beryllium , iron , chromium and noble gas isotopes are also suitable for geological and palaeoclimatological investigations . Recently, ⁴⁰ Ar / ³⁹ Ar dating has been increasingly used, as this method, based on the noble gas argon, enables considerably more precise results than conventional potassium-argon dating . Zirconium crystals also provide very precise geochronological data due to the traces of radioactive nuclides they contain .

Early climate history

Reconstruction of the earth's mean temperature and precipitation history for 3.8 billion years. E = Ice Age, E (underlined) = Ice Age with ice formations at the geographic poles, W = ice-free warm climate

Climate history begins with the formation of the earth around 4.6 billion years ago. In the early stages of the Earth shortly after the formation of ground-level was temperature about 180 ° C . The cooling took a very long time, 4 billion years ago the temperature fell below the 100 ° C limit for the first time. The climate at that time was therefore not only hot, but also very dry. So there was no ocean , precipitation or other liquid water on earth, and the composition of the reducing primordial atmosphere differed greatly from today 's earth atmosphere . Regardless of the environmental conditions, chemical evolution began at this point in time , during which organic molecules were formed that were essential as building blocks for the creation of life .

With the progressive cooling of reaching steam for the first time in the history of the earth its condensation point , then that liquid water could form. Without this, the creation of life and the subsequent biological evolution on earth would have been impossible.

After the first water had condensed, the water cycle and with it the hydrosphere gradually developed . The oldest signs of oceans on our earth are found in rocks , which are now 3.2 billion years old.

2.6 billion years ago, during the development of the earth's atmosphere , the activity of cyanobacteria formed the first oxygen in the primordial atmosphere and reached significant concentrations around 2.2 billion years ago. Most of the water vapor condensed and was bound as water in seas and lakes. Along with the water vapor, a large part of the carbon dioxide also disappeared from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide was consumed by the cyanobacteria, which used it as a source of carbon in the course of photosynthesis . The carbon was withdrawn from the normal cycle because the cyanobacteria were not metabolized by other organisms, but instead settled on the sea floor , where they were finely distributed in the sediments or fossilized as stromatolites in the near-shore, light-flooded shallow water area . Only then was it possible to build up an oxidizing oxygen atmosphere, with no significant increases in concentration occurring over a long period of time, since the released oxygen initially only oxidized iron compounds. This iron oxide resulted in large deposits of so-called band ores , which have been preserved as rich deposits and are intensively mined. The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere continued to rise, making aerobic life possible on earth. The change in the concentration of greenhouse gases and their composition also changed the Earth's radiation budget and set in motion the greenhouse effect that has been warming the earth since then.

This very early part of climate history is divided into four parts. The Precambrian describes the largest period of around 3.8 to 0.57 billion years. It is relatively difficult to reconstruct so far because the rocks from this time were subject to far-reaching changes, so that there is only little data from this geological age that can be used for the reconstruction of the climate. Nonetheless, the early part of the climatic history is particularly interesting, as the first ice ages lay in it. The first of them was about 2.3 billion years ago. From around the end of the Precambrian it is now possible to sufficiently reconstruct and understand the climate. This is mainly achieved through the analysis of sediments.

Methane hypothesis

Change in the luminosity of the sun and the resulting global mean surface temperature with and without today's atmosphere based on model calculations

At the beginning of the earth's history the luminosity of the sun was only 70 percent of today's value. That would not have been enough to prevent global icing. In contrast, geological evidence suggests that the Earth's temperature is higher than the average for the last 100,000 years. This contradiction is called the weak young sun paradox .

To explain the warming, the atmospheric greenhouse effect is discussed in science :

Ammonia is one of the most effective greenhouse gases , but it is quickly destroyed in the atmosphere by UV rays, which reached the earth's surface 2.3 billion years ago due to the lack of an ozone layer .
Carbon dioxide - also a greenhouse gas - entered the earth's atmosphere through volcanism . In the absence of oxygen, CO ₂ reacts with iron oxide to form siderite ( iron (II) carbonate ). This reaction would start at a concentration of 3040 ml / m³. However, no siderite can be found in rock layers that are 2.8 to 2.2 billion years old. So the CO ₂ concentration must have been relatively low at the time and could not have prevented global icing.
The favored methane hypothesis states that in the period 2.3 billion years ago (the beginning of oxygen- forming photosynthesis ) the greenhouse gas methane caused the necessary warming, formed by anaerobic archaebacteria .

Without an oxidizing earth atmosphere, which would convert methane to carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide , the retention time of methane in the earth's atmosphere could be 10,000 years, whereas today it is around 10 years. Many methane generators require hydrogen gas and CO ₂ , which are emitted by volcanoes , to build their structures and as an energy source. These organisms now prefer an ambient temperature of over 40 ° C. The warmer the earth became due to the greenhouse gas methane, the better they were able to reproduce and the more methane was formed, so that global warming should have reached values at which higher life would not have been possible. Since methane reacts in sunlight to form long-chain hydrocarbons , which attach to dust particles in the air, a haze was created at high altitudes that prevented further warming.

Sediments that are more than 2.2 billion years old prove that the atmosphere at that time must have been largely free of oxygen . They contain large amounts of divalent iron, which can only be formed in the absence of oxygen. In younger rocks, however, the trivalent iron oxide hematite can be found almost without exception . This is an indication that oxygen - apparently formed by photosynthesis - was increasingly being released into the atmosphere. Since oxygen is poisonous for methane producers and other anaerobic organisms, they either died out or colonized the oxygen-free ecological niches at the bottom of the deep sea (see also carbon cycle ). The abrupt disappearance of most methane generators and the oxidation of methane by oxygen led to a weakening of the greenhouse effect and, as a result, to a long ice age.

Ice age

An ice age is an epoch in which there were or are frozen poles on earth . The current icing of both polar caps means that our earth is currently climatically in an ice age. During most of the climate history, the earth was almost ice-free ( warm climate ). The Milanković cycles are always mentioned as the cause of the periodic recurrence of cold and warm periods, along with other causes .

The first recorded ice age, which began about 2.3 billion years ago and lasted about 300 million years, was the " Archaic Ice Age ", which was probably triggered by the great oxygen catastrophe. Regionally, this ice age has different names, for example it is called the “Huronian Ice Age” in North America , after the Huron Sea , in whose rock layers numerous references to it can be found.

The second ice age in the history of the earth was a relatively long time coming. It was only in rock layers 950 million years old, i.e. over 1 billion years later, that indications can be found that ice formed again on the earth. This ice age is called the " Algonk Ice Age " or "Griesjö icing". So far there is only evidence of this Ice Age in Europe through traces of ice movements in the rocks . From this it is deduced that only one pole of the earth lying in the area of today's Europe was covered with ice.

Reconstruction of the temperature profile over the last 545 million years using the oxygen isotopes ¹⁸ O / ¹⁶ O

The next two ice ages followed between 750 and 620 million years after a warm period. They occurred at a relatively short distance, both hemispheres were icy. The ice ages are called " Sturtic Ice Age ", " Marino Ice Age " and " Varanger Ice Age " , together as the " Eocambrian Ice Age ". Evidence that the entire globe was covered by ice up to the equator during this period is discussed under the term snowball earth .

The “ Silurian-Ordovician Ice Age ” that followed began 440 million years ago. This probably only very weak ice age was limited to the area of today's Sahara and is therefore also called "Sahara glaciation". Some scientists believe it is spread as far as South America and South Africa .

The two following Ice Ages were again more pronounced. The " Permocarbonic Ice Age ", also known as the "Gondwana Glaciation" , took place 280 million years ago .

The last ice age began 2.6 million years ago and continues to this day. The history of human development falls into this period. It is called the " Quaternary Ice Age" and is by far the best researched because the evidence of the glaciation in many areas of the world is still well preserved. A wealth of data on the climate can be found in various climate archives for this most recent period in the history of the earth . In addition to very cold phases, the cold periods (glacials), in which large parts of Antarctica, Europe, Asia, South and North America were glaciated, there were also warm periods ( interglacials ), in which the climate roughly corresponded to today's. The Holocene , which continues to this day and lasted around 9620 BC Began, is one such interglacial.

The current ice age

Reconstruction of the mean temperature curve over the last five million years

The most recent ice age, the Quaternary , began about 2.6 million years ago and continues to this day. During the Tertiary , the temperature had gradually decreased, so that the Antarctic had been covered with an ice cap since the Oligocene around 30 million years ago. About 3.2 million years ago, at least that is what deep-sea sediments show, the temperature dropped again significantly. In the Gelasium , an ice cap formed at the North Pole with some delay, and the temperature fluctuations that continue to this day began.

In the period from 3.2 to 1.6 million years, a cycle time of 41,000 years for the temperature fluctuations could be determined. In the course of temperature over the past 2.6 million years, i.e. within the Pleistocene , the observed temperature fluctuations occur in cycles of around 100,000 years. When it comes to temperatures, the relationship must be taken into account: Measured against the climate history of the last 100 million years, it is currently cold because we are in the Quaternary Ice Age. However, it is currently relatively warm within this Ice Age because we have been in a warm period of the Ice Age, the Holocene, for about 11,625 years.

Reconstruction of the temperature profile during the Quaternary Ice Age using various ice cores: EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) and Vostok

In the last 850,000 years alone there have been a multitude of warm and cold periods. According to studies of oxygen isotopes in marine sediments, at least nine changes between cold and warm periods occurred during this time. The ice advances and retreats have left a complicated patchwork of deposits on land. In northern Germany today, the following sections are distinguished, some of which include several cold and warm periods:

from about 850,000 years on: Cromer complex
from around 400,000 years: Elster Cold Age
from about 320,000 years old: Holstein warm period
from about 300,000 years onwards: Saale glacial period
from about 126,000 years: Eem warm period
from around 115,000 years: last glacial period (regionally named Weichsel glacial period in the north, Würm glacial period in the south )
for about 11,625 years: recent warm period or Holocene

The hot and cold periods coinciding with each other were named differently in the regions concerned. The last glacial period in the Alps is called the "Würm glacial period", in Northern Europe the "Vistula glacial period", England "Devensian", in Russia "Waldai" and in North America "Wisconsin". In addition, the common names cannot easily be equated, as increasing knowledge has shown that even the phases of the last cold period do not always correspond and that this is almost impossible for the older warm and cold periods.

The different temperatures within the warm and cold periods are called " stadials " for relatively cold times and " interstadials " for relatively warm times. There were three stadiums in the Würm glacial period alone, around 60,000, 40,000 and 18,000 years ago. At that time, the temperature only deviated by about four to five Kelvin from our current mean temperature, but this meant that about three times as much ice was able to form as today. 18,000 years ago this had the effect that the sea level was about 135 meters lower than it is today. The Gulf Stream was severely weakened and the North Sea almost completely disappeared. Only in the tropics was the climate similar. The January mean temperature in Germany was then around –20 ° C, today it is 0.3 ° C. This had a major impact on the animal world . In northern Germany, for example, the polar bear was native at this time .

This shows that even a very severe winter by today's standards cannot be compared to a winter in a cold period. The reversal of the Vistula glacial period to today's warm period is seen by scientists as an abrupt climatic change , although it occurred over the course of several thousand years (15,000 to 7,000 years ago). The change between the cold and warm periods is dated 11,000 years ago.

Dansgaard-Oeschger events

Dansgaard-Oeschger events (named after the paleoclimatologist Willi Dansgaard and the physicist Hans Oeschger ) have been researched since their discovery in the 1980s and describe extremely rapid temperature increases in the area of the North Atlantic during the last ice age. There was a sudden rise in temperatures from 6 to 10 ° C within a decade. These warm phases subsided only slowly and often lasted for several centuries. 26 Dansgaard-Oeschger events can be found in climate archives from the Würm and Vistula glacial periods , which began 115,000 years ago and ended almost 12,000 years ago, especially in Greenland ice cores and in the deep-sea deposits of the Atlantic. After the transition into the Holocene , these abrupt climatic fluctuations no longer occurred. However, there is evidence that similar temperature jumps also took place during the Eem warm period 126,000 to 115,000 years ago.

Contribution of coral reefs to recent temperature rise

In the period from 16,000 to 10,000 years before our time

the temperature in the Antarctic rose from -8 ° C to slightly below 0 ° C;
the carbon dioxide content of the earth's atmosphere rose from 180 ml / m³ ( ppm ) to 260 ml / m³, with part of this increase being due to the lower solubility of carbon dioxide in the oceans with increasing temperature ;
the sea level rose by 100 meters.

Around 10,000 years ago, the regions where coral reefs could exist were also flooded . These require a relatively high water temperature and shallow, light-flooded water. The corals flourished between 9000 and 6000 years ago. Their speed of growth and the further rise in sea level by 20 meters were just balanced. Today the growth rate of the coral reefs has decreased significantly because the sea level hardly rises. Since carbon dioxide is released during the precipitation of the limestone shell of the corals (see carbon cycle ), the carbon dioxide content has been increased by around 50 ml / m³ over the past 14,000 years, according to estimates by the coral reefs. It is assumed that calcareous plankton contributes just as much to the CO _{2 increase in} the atmosphere as corals.

El Niño and La Niña

As El Nino or more specifically El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the occurrence of changes in flow patterns in oceanographic - meteorological system of the equatorial Pacific designated. The cause is a strong interaction between the trade winds and the ocean. Usually the trade wind drives the waters of the Pacific along the equator west towards Indonesia. Since the water heats up under the influence of tropical sunlight, it is particularly warm in the western Pacific. In the east, on the other hand, off the west coast of South America, the transported surface water is replaced by colder deep water. Due to the temperature difference between cool water in the east and warm water in the west, there is not only a drive for the trade winds, but also a feedback mechanism through which the system can swing in one direction or the other. When the trade wind collapses, the warm water flows back east. A heat anomaly then arises there in the form of an El Niño.

In contrast to El Niño , La Niña is an exceptionally cold current in the equatorial Pacific, which can create extensive low pressure areas, especially in Southeast Asia. In this case, the Passat blows strongly and persistently. As a result, the eastern Pacific continues to cool. In Indonesia and the surrounding regions heavy rain falls, while at the same time extreme drought prevails in some South American areas.

In three quarters of the world, the weather is significantly influenced by a strong El Niño . For example, on the entire South American Pacific coast and in some cases on the North American west coast, heavy rainfalls and associated floods occur. In contrast, Southeast Asia and Australia experience longer periods of drought with bushfires and forest fires.

Favorable conditions for the occurrence of El Niños have existed at intervals of about two to eight years over the past three centuries, with most of them being weak. However, there are indications of very strong El Niños from the early Holocene around 11,500 years ago. In the 20th century, major El Niño events were recorded in 1925/1926, 1972/1973 and 1982/1984. The El Niño of 1997/1998 contributed significantly to the fact that 1998 was the warmest year globally since the beginning of systematic temperature records. There is a related climate phenomenon in the Atlantic in the form of the North Atlantic Oscillation .

The current warm period

Reconstruction of the temperature history of the earth over the last 12,000 years

Even in the current warm period, the Holocene, there are still many relative climate changes. As we approach the present, the reconstruction of the climate is becoming more and more detailed and diverse. But the oldest three quarters of the Holocene are still largely unexplored. Only with the development of the first high cultures does the observation become more precise. Research in the Sahara and seabed investigations in the Mediterranean showed that around 10,000 years ago, the desert in North Africa was not predominant, but a grass savannah that was populated by a multitude of animals and offered a habitat for people. Fossil plants as well as rock and cave paintings bear witness to this . One thesis is based on a cyclical greening of the desert areas of North Africa, the cycle time of which is around 22,000 years. As a result, constant long-term change in climate is part of a natural cycle of "winners and losers".

The change from the last glacial period to the current warm period proceeded relatively quickly, but still took several thousand years. This was mainly due to the fact that the large ice sheets could not melt so quickly. The Scandinavian ice sheet disappeared about 7,000 years ago and therefore melted relatively quickly compared to the shields in North America and North Asia . The Laurentian Ice Sheet in North America was only completely disintegrated 4,000 years ago. It would take at least 15,000 years for today's Antarctic ice sheet to melt.

About 8000 to 4000 years ago the present warm period passed a peak, so that a slow development towards the next cold period can be assumed. However, this movement is so slow that the temperature only decreases by around 0.1 ° C over a period of a thousand years. However, this small change is masked by so many other influences on the climate that it can practically only be recognized over a very long period on average. Even these overlapping changes do not show an average temperature rise or fall of more than around 1 ° C over a large area, for example over the southern hemisphere.

The “Holocene temperature optimum” (or “ Atlantic ”) lasted at least in the northern hemisphere from about 7000 BC. Until 4000 BC BC, with marked interruptions between 6500 and 6100 BC. BC (the so-called 8.2ka event due to the inflow of the North American ice reservoir Agassizsee into the Atlantic) and around 5200 BC. Chr. From an unexplained cause.

In the course of the Holocene there were repeatedly "smaller" climatic fluctuations ( Misox fluctuations , Piora fluctuations ), which had a noticeable effect on the vegetation and thus on the fauna and humans. In this context, the two terms “ pluvial ” (relatively high-precipitation phase) and “ interpluvial ” (relatively dry phase) are used. This is necessary because in history the fluctuations in temperature and precipitation did not always run parallel.

The evolution of the global mean temperature over the past 2000 years, reconstruction and, since the 19th century, measurements.

Various periodizations have been proposed for the climate history in historical times, especially that of Europe and the North Atlantic region . An influential division that primarily relates to Europe comes from Schönwiese , who went back to older works, for example by Flohn and Lamb . According to her, between about 100 BC there were And 500 AD the " optimum of Roman times ". When this climatic epoch slowly came to an end and the climate cooled down (“ pessimum of the migration period ”), the time of the great migrations came (around 370 to 570 AD). Because there are many parallels between climate and human history, a connection cannot be ruled out. After this relatively “bad” time for mankind, a warmer epoch developed again. The Medieval Warm Period followed from around 800 AD . In large parts of Europe it was characterized by economic and demographic upswing and went hand in hand with the cultural heyday of the High Middle Ages - keyword: the construction of cathedrals and other imposing structures. In the beginning, the precipitation was still limited, which changed towards the end of this phase when the precipitation rates rose sharply. Many German place names referring to viticulture come from this time, although in the meantime viticulture was no longer possible there.

To the optimum of the 11th-14th Century followed another climate change with lower temperatures beginning around the 15th century. The climate of the Northern Hemisphere in the 17th century was less than 1 ° C cooler compared to the average temperature of the 20th century, with a locally stronger cooling in regions near the North Atlantic. A cooling of around 0.2 ° C compared to the medieval optimum is assumed for the global climate. Although the term Ice Age is an exaggeration, this time is called the Little Ice Age . The Vikings are often mentioned as another example of the connection between human cultural development and climate history . They first settled in Greenland in 982 AD and stayed there for several centuries. Due to the increasing cooling in the North Atlantic area, the settlement of the island came to a more or less abrupt end. Until recently it was assumed that in addition to economic and sociological reasons, the deteriorating climatic conditions contributed significantly to the abandonment of the last Norman settlement on Greenland around 1500. However, current studies come to contrary results. The Medieval Warm Period in the area of Greenland had practically no effects on the local climate, and the Greenland glaciers almost reached their maximum extent between the years 975 and 1275. A phase of mild temperatures that would last for centuries would therefore be ruled out according to the new data.

The phase of lower average temperatures and many extreme winters ( Little Ice Age ) following the Medieval Warm Period is seen by historians as a factor in the early modern period, which was affected by multiple political, economic and social shocks, for which the term "crisis of the 17th century" was coined. The extremely cold winters, however, also influenced the cultural development of Europe: until around 1500, winter pictures were a rarity in European art - through the paintings of Hendrick Avercamp and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (typical is his Die Jäger im Schnee from around 1565) - they became a genre in the visual arts especially in western and northern Europe.

There is no clear evidence of warming or cooling phases that took place simultaneously for several decades worldwide for the period from year 1 to before the start of industrialization.

Global warming and the future of climate

Global annual mean temperatures on the earth's surface for the past 125 years relative to the mean in the period 1951–1980.

The current findings of climate research indicate that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have significantly increased the natural greenhouse effect since the beginning of industrialization and thus have an increasing influence on the climate. Global mean temperatures have increased by 0.74 ° C ± 0.18 ° C over the course of the 20th century. The warming is most pronounced from 1976 until today. According to the emission scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the current Fifth Assessment Report , the global average temperature could in the worst case increase by more than 4 ° C compared to the pre-industrial value by the end of the 21st century. This warming is accompanied by sometimes drastic consequences , which can intensify with increasing warming.

literature

German-language books with a focus on paleoclimatology

Wolfgang Oschmann: Evolution of the Earth. History of life and the earth. utb. basics. Haupt Verlag, Bern 2016, UTB volume no. 4401. ISBN 978-3-8252-4401-9 .

Peter Ward , Joe Kirschvink : A New Story of Life. How catastrophes determined the course of evolution. Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Munich 2016. ISBN 978-3-421-04661-1 .

Jens Boenigk, Sabina Wodniok: Biodiversity and Earth History . Springer Verlag, Berlin - Heidelberg 2014 (Springer Spectrum), DOIː 10.1007 / 978-3-642-55389-9 , ISBN 978-3-642-55388-2 .

Karl-Heinz Ludwig: A Brief History of the Climate. From the creation of the earth to today , autumn 2006, ISBN 3-406-54746-X .

Monika Huch, Günter Warnecke, Klaus Germann (eds.): Climatic testimonies of geological history. Perspectives for the future . With contributions by Wolfgang H. Berger, Arthur Block, Werner von Bloh, Werner Buggisch, Klaus Germann, Monika Huch, Gerhard Petschel-Held, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, Torsten Schwarz, Hansjörg Streif, Otto H. Wallner, Günter Warnecke, Gerold Wefer . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-540-67421-7 .

József Pálfy: Disasters in the history of the earth. Global extinction? Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-510-65211-8 .

Christoph Buchal, Christian-Dietrich Schönwiese: Climate. The earth and its atmosphere through the ages . Ed .: Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, 2nd edition. Hanau 2012, ISBN 978-3-89336-589-0 .

Frank Sirocko: History of the Climate. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-8062-2711-6 .

German-language books with a focus on historical climatology

Heinz Wanner: Climate and People. A 12,000 year history. Haupt Verlag, Bern. 1st edition 2016. ISBN 978-3-258-07879-3
Elmar Buchner / Norbert Buchner: Climate and Cultures. The story of Paradise and the Flood. Verlag Bernhard Albert Greiner, Remshalden 2005. ISBN 3-935383-84-3
Rüdiger Glaser : Climate History of Central Europe. 1000 years of weather, climate, disasters. With forecasts for the 21st century , 2nd edition Darmstadt 2008. ISBN 978-3-89678-604-3
Christian Pfister: Weather forecast. 500 years of climatic variations and natural disasters (1496–1995). Paul Haupt, Bern 1999. ISBN 3-258-05696-X
Ronald D. Gerste : How the weather makes history: Disasters and climate change from antiquity to today. Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2015. ISBN 978-3-608-94922-3

English language books

Raymond S. Bradley: Paleoclimatology. Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary. Academic Press (Elsevier Inc.) Oxford, Amsterdam, Waltham, San Diego, Third Edition 2015, ISBN 978-0-12-386913-5 .
Thomas N. Cronin: Paleoclimates: understanding climate change past and present. Columbia University Press, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-231-14494-0 .
Raymond S. Bradley, Norman Law: Climate change and society ; Nelson Thornes; Cheltenham 2001
Thomas J. Crowley, GR North, Paleoclimatology , Oxford University Press, New York, 1991
William F. Ruddiman: Earth's climate. Past and Future . WH Freeman and Sons; New York 2001

Web links

Historical Climatology
Climate history of the Mediterranean (PDF file; 264 kB)
The climate of the past (PDF file; 269 kB) (UmweltWissen - Bavarian State Office for the Environment)
DFG Science TV: “Polar Climate Archive” - Drilling in the Arctic: Climate Research for the Future - Video series on climate research in the Arctic

Individual evidence

↑ Melanie J. Leng, Jim D. Marshall: Palaeoclimate interpretation of stable isotope data from lake sediment archives . (PDF) In: Quaternary Science Reviews . 23, No. 7-8, April 2004, pp. 811-831. doi : 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2003.06.012 .

↑ Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years (PDF file; 433 kB) , correlation table of the Subcomission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the ICS

↑ Thomas Litt, Karl-Ernst Behre, Klaus-Dieter Meyer, Hans-Jürgen Stephan and Stefan Wansa: Stratigraphic terms for the Quaternary of the northern German glaciation area . In: T. Litt on behalf of the German Stratigraphic Commission (ed.): Stratigraphie von Deutschland - Quaternary. Special issue. Ice Age and Present / Quaternary Science Journal . 56, No. 1/2. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagbuchhandlung (Nägele and Obermiller), 2007, ISSN 0424-7116 , p. 7-65 , doi : 10.3285 / e.g. 56.1-2.02 .

^ Rik Tjallingii, Martin Claussen, Jan-Berend W. Stuut, Jens Fohlmeister, Alexandra Jahn, Torsten Bickert, Frank Lamy, Ursula Röhl: Coherent high- and low-latitude control of the northwest African hydrological balance . (PDF) In: Nature Geoscience . 2008, pp. 670-675. doi : 10.1038 / ngeo289 .

↑ Pages 2k Network: Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia . In: Nature Geoscience . tape 6 , no. 5 , February 2013, p. 339-346 , doi : 10.1038 / ngeo1797 ( nature.com ).

↑ Christian-Dietrich Schönwiese: Climate fluctuations (= Understandable Science . Volume 115 ). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1979, pp. 75-84 .

↑ Christian-Dietrich Schönwiese: Climate changes: data, analyzes, forecasts . Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1995, ISBN 3-540-59096-X , pp. 79-92 .

↑ Ronald D. Gerste: How the weather makes history: Disasters and climate change from antiquity to today. Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2015. ISBN 978-3608949223 .

^ Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, JT, Y. Ding, DJ Griggs, M. Noguer, PJ van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, and CA Johnson (eds.) ] . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Retrieved November 12, 2018.

↑ Global signatures and dynamical origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly . Science . Retrieved September 28, 2012.

^ William J. D'Andrea, Yongsong Huang, Sherilyn C. Fritz, N. John Anderson: Abrupt Holocene climate change as an important factor for human migration in West Greenland . (PDF) In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 108, No. 24, June 2011, pp. 9765-9769. doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1101708108 .

↑ Nicolás E. Young, Avriel D. Schweinsberg, Jason P. Briner, Joerg M. Schaefer: Glacier maxima in Baffin Bay during the Medieval Warm Period coeval with Norse settlement . In: Science Advances . 1, No. 11, December 2015. doi : 10.1126 / sciadv.1500806 .

↑ Ronald D. Gerste : How the weather makes history: Disasters and climate change from antiquity to today. Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 2015. ISBN 978-3-608-94922-3 . Pp. 92-95.

↑ Raphael Neukom1, Nathan Steiger, Juan José Gómez-Navarro, Jianghao Wang, John P. Werner: No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era . In: Nature . July 24, 2019, doi : 10.1038 / s41586-019-1401-2 .

^ NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , January 19, 2018

^ IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, TF, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, SK Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and PM Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA .: Summary for policymakers .

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This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 4, 2005 .

[10.1016/j.quascirev.2003.06.012-1] Melanie J. Leng, Jim D. Marshall: Palaeoclimate interpretation of stable isotope data from lake sediment archives . (PDF) In: Quaternary Science Reviews . 23, No. 7-8, April 2004, pp. 811-831. doi : 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2003.06.012 .