Social Science CLimate Section 1 and 2

How long did humans live in an ice age

For 100 K years

When was the oldest human fossil and when did the homo sapians become the last surviving member of the genus

300 K years ago, 40 K years ago respectively

Is ESS old or new?

It is new

What will ESS help us understand?

Climate Change as a NATURAL phenomenon

When did the Pleistocene and the Holocene start?

The Pleistocene started 2.58 million years ago

The Holocene started 11700 years ago

Are there traces left of people from the Pleistocene?

Not really, they left very little trace of themselves and of their migrations.

What is ESS?

Earth System Science

What subsystems does ESS have?

1. Biosphere

2. Atmosphere

3. Geosphere

4. Hydrosphere

All these sphere interact with each other and shape weather and climate?

What is another name for Geosphere

Lithosphere

Where does the word lithosphere come from?

The Greek word for rock, lithos

How does the geosphere impact weather

Volcanoes create shade, mountains cause cloud cover.

What notable events occurs during the geologic time scale?

1. shifting of the Earth's plate

2. release and recapture of chemicals and particles within the Earth

The most publicized effects of climate change occurs at which spehre?

Hydrosphere

What subsphere does hydrosphere contain?

The cryosphere

What did the human use of fossil fuels do to the Earth's natural carbon cycle?

It rapidly accelerated it.

What are forcings?

factors that are external to a climate system and influence climate change, such as volcanic activity, solar variations, and greenhouse gases

What are 3 particularly influential forcings?

1. Solar energy

2. Volcanoes

3. GHGs

What feedback loops happen in the Great Lakes? When?

In the winter season, warmer temperatures lead to evaporation lead to more cloud cover.

What is the polar vortex feedback?

Warming climate weakens the vortex, causing its cool airs to move more south than usual

When was there a lack of sunspots?

In the late 1600s and early 1700s

What are the Milankovitch cycles?

patterns of the Earth's orbit that determines how much solar radiation it absorbs.

100,000

41,000

26,000

What is the tipping point?

In a positive feedback loop, it is the point of no return

What are archives?

"Physical repositories of documents"

But for climate history is the sources they use.

Proxies of the archives of nature

1. Trees (dendrochronology)

2. Ice

3. Soil

4. Corals

How far back can Ice date back to?

Hundreds of thousands of years

When does instrumental records date to?

1700, when the first thermometer was invented

What are the proxies of the archives of society?

1. Stories and narratives

2. Shiplogs (daily accounts of weather)

3. Grain prices

More tentative is

- highwater markers on buildings

- artworks

WSince when did Phoenix start recording its heat

In 1896

In order to measure global temperatures, scientists often also measure

different layers of the atmosphere's temperature

What is a scholarly field?

A group of scholars sharing common practices for studying the type of evidence.

What are the fields of climate history?

1. Historical Cimatology

2. Paleoclimatography

3. Climate history

4. HCS (History of climate and society)

What time period does historical/paleo climatology concern itself with?

Time period before the 1800s, which is when records of climate where starting to be taken.

What archives does historical/paleo climatology concern itself with?

Archives of nature

Skills that historical/paleo climatologists have to have?

1. Extracting samples from nature

2. Knowing how to operate teh machines to analyze the sample

3. analyzing the samples

4. Communicating findings according to conventions.

Skills that climate historians have to have>

1. know the language that text/scripts are in

2. finding the scripts

3. know the context to interpret the scripts/texts

4. analytical techniques: formulating narratives based on the evidence.

5. communication

Who pioneered Climate history?

Swiss Christian Pfister

What did Christian Pfister do for Climate History?

Showed compellingly that archives of society works.

He compiled sources and standardized methodology for analyzing these things.

What does HCS do?

Scrutinizes causal claims and scale

Who pioneered HCS?

Dagomer Degroot

When did humans started to burn fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate?

200 years ago

When did who propose the Anthropocene?

In 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group proposed it, but the International Union of Geological Sciences rejected them.

When was the history profession standardized?

In the 1800s, but no one did climate except French

E. Ladurie and Fernand Braudel

When did historians start to incldue climate in narratives of global history?

2000

What scholarship favors climate determinism and what rejects it?

Older scholarships favor it while newer ones reject it.

When did human recorded history start and up to when can we infer due to archaeological evidence?

Started 5-6 thousand years ago, can infer up to 40 thousand

Who said that we are rapidly changing our own environment?

Dipesh Chkrabarty

Who first introduced the idea that we can influence the environment?

Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring.

Before the Holocene, what is the population of humans?

10 million

What and when was the Last Glacial Maximum?

20K years ago, what it sounds like.

Europe (Britain, Scandinavia, Central Europe) AS WELL AS North America was frozen

Asia had permafrost

Oceans were hundreds of feet lower than now.

Younger Dryas Period (12900-11700)

during a warming caused by solar cycles 14 thousands years ago that led to a meltwater event, leading to cooling for a millenium. After that, the Holocene started: the world continued warming.

How many interglacial periods has there been?

8 in 800,000 years

What is the Quaternary Period?

The last 2.6 million years

According to the cycles of the Quaternary Period, what should our temperature be doing right now?

It should be cooling.

What year makes "present"?

2000

3 periods of the Holocene and their years

Early/Greenlandian Holocene (11700 - 8236 years ago)

Mid / Northgrippian Holocene (8236-4250 years ago)

Late / Meghalayan (4250- present)

How deep is NGRIP 2?

1492.45

What continenet did homo sapiens originate?

Africa

When was the Holocene's thermal maximum?

11000 to 7000 years ago

How did the Early Holocene end and Mid Holocene begin?

The Laurentide Ice sheet in Canada melted, leading to a melting event.

What did the Laurentide ice sheet melting do?

Temperatures remained high for another thousand years until the Mid Holocene Turnover.

Where were the humans in the Early Holocene Period?

Worldwide

Why are generalizations not cool for studying climate's effect?

because the humans are worldwide

Where is there new research in Early Holocene

Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe

Madagascar in Eastern Africa

What was teh effect of the Early Holocene in North America?

The extinction of large animals

Explanation: either humans killed it or it couldn't adapt to the climate

When did the Mid Holocene start?

6200 BC

Agriculture in the Early Holocene

it increased, but groups were still mobile and not considered the first agricultural people (which are in the Mid Holocene)

What is the Mid-Holocene Transition

A lowering of temperatures around 7300 years ago (5300 and 3700 BC) due to weakened solar radiation

When was the transtiion from Stone to Bronze Age?

The later centuries of the Mid Holocene

When did civilization rize?

Mesopotamia around 3500 BC

What is the Late Holocene named after?

A cave in NE India, where mineral deposits showed climate change. The Mawmluh Cave

What caused the start of the Late Holocene?

The 4.2 ka event.

What Holocene period is the most known

Late (duh)

What difference does climate and history timelines have?

cliamte uses "years ago" while history uses BC and CE

What year does climatologists use to count backwards?

1950 or 2000

What are the hallmarks of civilization

Agriculture

Writing

Societal Structures

Buildings - modifications to their environment

But some people have critiqued judging "civilizations" based on these markers.

Describe the Sumerian era

They had

a priestly class

writing

cities

irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates River

When was the Sumerian era?

3600-3000 BC

When was the Akkadian era?

2334-2218BC

What is thought to have been a factor in the fall of the Akkadians?

The 4.2 ka in 2250 BC

What are the kingdoms in Mesopotamia?

Sumerian

Akkadian

Babylonian

Assyrian

Persian

Why is the 4.2 ka potentially not the destroyer of the Akkadian

Because although the decline of Egyptian society also coincided with it,

not all cities declined the same, cannot extrapolate.

When was writing done in Egypt?

3200 BC

When was pyramids done in Egypt?

2500 BC

What did the 4.2 ka cause in Egypt?

Declien of the Old Kingdom

Timeline of the Old Kingdom

2700-2200 BC

What is the Egyptian society used to study?

Irrigation and their use of sustainable farming methods

Describe the 3 periods of the Indus civilization

1. Early Harappan Period (3200-2600 BC)

population growth, urbanization, new settlements.

2. Mature Harappan Period (2600-1900 BC)

peak, societal stratification, gridded cities with drainage, trade

3. Late Harappan Period (1900-1000 BC)

deurbanization and return to villages

What caused the decline of the Indus River Valley Civilization?

We don't know for sure, this opens the way for climate to be a factor as there is no evidence of military conflict

What 2 locations developed in antiquity in the Americas and the civilizations they have?

Andes in wester South America:

Chavin (900-200 BC)

Incus (1400 CE)

Central NA and Mexico:

Olmec from (1200 to 400 BC)

Mayan and Aztecs

Describe the geography and climate of the Americas

Geographically diverse:

high mountains

extensive vegetation

fluctuating climate

What areas did Alexander the Great conquer?

Persia, Egypt and ventured into India

Where did the Romans expand Alexander the Great's area?

The western boundaries of Mediterranean in EU and Africa

What is the peak of the Roman emperor?

117 CE

How could climate have affected the Greeks and the Romans?

Cooler temperatures and wetter thingies in 8th to 5th centuries: Greeks

Stable vegetation and stable weather 150BC-250 CE: Romans

What is a good way to study the societal effect of climate?

How it affects people's lives

When did Rome end, what climate change does it coincide with?

It ended in 476 CE, fits nicely with volcanic eruptionsi in 536 CE

What did the end of Rome signal the start of?

The Middle Ages, until 1450-1500

What was the transition from the Middle Ages and when?

Renaissance 1300-1600

What was the Middle Ages also called, and why, and why not?

The Dark Ages, because culture and technology declined.

Largely a European phenomenon, and only part of the whole story

What do scientists think of the 536 CE volcanic eruption?

They are not sure if it is longterm or short term effects