Climate and History News

Oliver Lucier, "Climate Conscious: Caribbean Commodities and Holdridge Life Zones, 1940s–1960s," ISIS (September 2023)

September 13, 2023
Oliver Lucier, “Climate Conscious: Caribbean Commodities and Holdridge Life Zones, 1940s–1960s,” ISIS 114:3 (September 2023):  578-598.   During the 1980s and 1990s the...

Hi′ilei Hobart discusses “Cooling the Tropics" (Edge Effects, 2023)

February 16, 2023
Jen Rose Smith, “The Cold Never Bothered Native Hawaiians Anyway: A Conversation with Hi’ilei Julia Hobart,” Edge Effects, February 16, 2023. 
Hi′ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, "Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment," (Duke University Press, 2022)

Hi′ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, "Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment," (Duke University Press, 2022)

December 9, 2022
Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of...

Alan Mikhail, "What the World Says: The Ottoman Empire, Interspecies Rape, and Climate in the Little Ice Age" (Critical Inquiry)

October 6, 2022
Abstract During the Little Ice Age of the early modern centuries, close to a third of the globe’s population perished. Because this period serves as the most recent...

Harvey Weiss, "Pyramid building and collapse," PNAS, August 2022.

September 13, 2022

Deborah Coen, "The heat wave could force Europeans to rethink flawed, centuries-old ideas" (Washington Post)

July 21, 2022
As Britain and France grapple with sweltering temperatures — possibly even record temperatures — for which their countries are ill-equipped, their privileged residents are...

Paul Erdkamp, Joseph G. Manning, Koenraad Verboven, eds., “Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East: Diversity in Collapse and Resilience,” (Palgrave MacMillan)

November 9, 2021
Book Abstract: Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies.  This book explores the link...

Joseph R. McConnell, et al., "Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom," PNAS

July 7, 2020
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/27/15443.full.pdf Joseph R. McConnell, Michael Sigl, Gill Plunkett, Andrea Burke, Woon Mi Kim, Christoph C. Raible, Andrew I. Wilson,...
Joseph Manning

NSF grant for research into climate and society links

September 28, 2018
A Yale-led project examining the link between explosive volcanic eruptions and the annual Nile river summer flooding in antiquity has received an award from the National...

Deborah Coen, “Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale” (Chicago, 2018)

July 16, 2018
Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth’s climate hinges on tracking interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular...

April 2018 Lecture Series, “Paleoclimate, Environment, History”

February 7, 2018
In April 2018, the Yale Nile Initiative Lecture Series will host a four-part lecture series, “Paleoclimate, Environment, History.” The speaker line-up includes: April 9:...

Joseph Manning, et al, “Volcanic suppression of Nile summer flooding triggers revolt and constrains interstate conflict in ancient Egypt,” Nature Communications (October 2017)

October 17, 2017
Joseph G. Manning, Francis Ludlow, Alexander R. Stine, William R. Boos, Michael Sigl, & Jennifer R. Marlon, “Volcanic suppression of Nile summer flooding triggers revolt...

Yale Excavation in Syria Continues to Reveal Secrets of World’s Earliest Cities

June 6, 2017
In the 1970s Yale archaeologist Harvey Weiss began excavating an ancient city in present day Syria that would reveal critical insights into the world’s first cities. Although...

Alan Mikhail, "Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History," (Chicago, 2017)

March 20, 2017
Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had a dream in which a tree sprouted from his navel. As the tree grew, its shade covered the earth; as Osman’s empire grew, it, too...

Ben Kiernan, "Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present" (Oxford, 2017)

March 16, 2017
For many Westerners, the name Vietnam evokes images of a bloody televised American war that generated a firestorm of protest and brought conflict into their living rooms. In...

Climate Lectures & Colloquium

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 - 4:00pm - HQ 136
Clark Alejandrino, Trinity College
"Weathering History: A Higher-Resolution Climate History of South China's Typhoon Spaces"
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Tuesday, October 8, 2024 - 4:30pm - Luce 203
Sunil Amrith, Yale University
"The Burning Earth: A History"
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Friday, April 12, 2024 - 11:00 AM - 230 Prospect Street, Room 101 and on Zoom
Philip Wight, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
"The Petro-Welfare State: Alaska’s Experiment in Fiscal and Ecological Sustainability (Agrarian Studies)"
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Thursday, February 8, 2024 - 4:00pm - On Zoom
Anto Mohsin, Northwestern University in Qatar
"The Politics of Electrification in Indonesia Post World War II"
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Friday, September 22, 2023 - 4:30pm - Yale Farm (345 Edwards St.)
Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, Yale University
""Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment" (Yale RITM and YSFP)"
Wednesday, September 13, 2023 - 12:00 PM - Online via Zoom
Eric Herschthal, University of Utah
"Carbon Conscripts: Slavery and the Origins of Climate Change (Gilder Lehrman Center)"
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Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Whitney Humanities Center
"Usable Climate Science and the Uses of History, An Interdisciplinary Workshop at Yale University"
Friday, October 25, 2019 - 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - 230 Prospect Street, Room 101
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo (SUNY Buffalo)
"The Subversive Politics of Sentient Places: Climate Change, Collective Ethics, and Environmental Justice in Peru (Yale Agrarian Studies)"
Monday, October 21, 2019 - 4:00 PM - TBA
Henry Lamb (Aberystwyth University)
"Lake Tana, the Blue Nile and beyond: paleoenvironments of Ethiopia (Yale Nile Initiative)"
Friday, October 4, 2019 - 4:00 PM - Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, Room 201
Elfatih Eltahir (MIT)
"Hydrology and Climate of the Nile Basin: Past, Present, and Future (Yale Nile Initiative)"
Friday, March 1, 2019 - 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - 230 Prospect Street, Room 101
"Mikael Wolfe (Stanford University), “A Revolution is a Force More Powerful than Nature’: The Impact of Hurricane Flora of 1963 on the Agrarian Character of the Cuban Revolution” (Yale Agrarian Studies)"
Friday, January 25, 2019 - 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM - 230 Prospect Street, Room 101
"Jason W. Moore (Binghamton University), “Climate Change and Civilizational Crisis, 376-2018: A Geohistorical Interpretation” (Yale Agrarian Studies)"
Monday, October 8, 2018 - 4:00 PM - Kline Geology Lab (KGL) Auditorium
Neal Spencer, British Museum.
"Neal Spencer, (British Museum), “The Pharaonic State, Nubia & the Nile: An Inhabitants’ Perspective from Amara West,” (The Yale Nile Initiative Lecture Series)"
Thursday, September 27, 2018 - 4:30 PM - Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE ), 202
Arupjyoti Saikia, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati
"Arupjyoti Saikia, (Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati), “The Unruly Floodplains, the British Empire and an Environmental History of the Brahmaputra” (South Asian Studies Council Colloquium)"
Monday, September 24, 2018 - 09/24/2018 - Kline Geology Laboratory, 210 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT 06511
Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, Nevada System of Higher Education, Reno
"Ancient History in Greenland Ice (Yale Nile Initiative Lecture Series)"