Climate Histories: Communicating Cultural Knowledge of Environmental Change

人们如何感知和沟通环境和气候的变化？科学计算通常涉及对温度变化的复杂测量和复杂的气象建模。然而，还有其他的变化，这些可能是推断，例如，通过改变特定物种的动物和植物的行为或通过新的天气类型的到来。此外，传达这些变化的形式不一定是技术气象记录的形式。关于气候变化的信息——无论是现在的还是过去的——可能会被嵌入民间传说、故事、歌曲、诗歌、生活史甚至修道院记录等类型中。科学解释的要素可能被借鉴，也可能被完全回避。这些非常多样的“气候历史”可以在海外和英国找到。我们的网络旨在解决如何最大限度地利用它们。气候历史是一个重要的信息来源。它们可以告诉我们很多关于过去发生的环境变化的信息，这些变化对生活在其中的人类（和其他物种）的影响，以及为应对这些变化而采取的策略。但从表面上看这些账目也有困难。它们可能很难获得，并且对分析提出了复杂的挑战。这些问题包括可靠性、类型、受众和性能。我们可以根据它们所包含的信息以及听者的智力和情感反应来分析它们。为了更好地理解这些气候历史，我们需要汇集各种学科的专业知识，包括社会人类学、历史学和人文学科。这些学科各自发展了不同的方法来记录和解释特定类型的传播在其产生的背景下的意义。我们的网络将汇集这些领域的专家，让他们一方面与自然科学领域的气候专家进行对话，另一方面与对生产和消费气候历史感兴趣的公众进行对话。该网络将召开虚拟方法论研讨会，世界各地的同事将在会上分享关于最能用于收集和解释气候历史的方法的想法。然后，我们将举行一个研讨会，探讨研究人员如何开发新的方法来处理他们在研究期间收集的气候历史。该活动将以一次公开会议结束，会上将介绍和讨论讲习班的研究成果。这将为编辑出版物和未来的研究计划奠定基础，这些计划将在资助的最后几个月里制定。该项目将通过创建自己的网站和相关论坛功能，在网上保持强大的存在感。这将允许网络成员在活动之间进行持续合作，并代表与公众的主要接触点。从长远来看，我们的目标是探索开发专门用于学校教学的资源，目标受众是GCSE和A-Level地理学生。这些材料将介绍不同的气候历史，并说明在不同的社会和文化环境中如何感知和应对气候变化。该网络的成员亦会向本地/自然历史学会及学校团体讲解主要的研究活动及研究成果。

How do people perceive and communicate changes in their environment and climate? Scientific accounts typically involve intricate measurements of changes in temperatures, and complex meteorological modeling. However there are other accounts of change, these might be inferred for example through the changing behaviour of particular species of animals and plants or through the arrival of new types of weather. Moreover, the forms in which these changes are communicated are not necessarily those of technical meteorological accounts. Information about climatic change - both current and in the past - may be embedded in genres such as folklore, stories, song, poetry, life histories and even monastic records. Elements of scientific accounts may be drawn upon, or it may be eschewed altogether. These very diverse 'climate histories' can be found both overseas and in the UK. Our network seeks to address how we can make the most of them.Climate histories are a vital source of information. They can tell us a great deal about the environmental change that has happened in the past, the effects this had had upon the humans (and other species) living through it, and the strategies that have been adopted in order to deal with such changes. But there are also difficulties in taking these accounts at face value. They may be difficult to obtain, and they present complex challenges for analysis. These include questions of reliability, genre, audience, and performance. They can be analysed both in terms of the information they contain, and the intellectual and emotional responses of those who hear them. To understand these climate histories better, we need to pool expertise from a variety of disciplines, including social anthropology, history, and the humanities. These disciplines have each developed differing methodologies for documenting and interpreting the significance of particular genres of communication within the contexts in which they are produced. Our network will bring together experts from these areas, putting them in dialogue with climate specialists in the natural sciences on the one hand, and publics interested in producing and consuming climate histories on the other.The network will convene virtual methodology seminars, in which colleagues around the world will share ideas on the methods that can best be used to gather and interpret climate histories. We will then hold a workshop to explore ways in which researchers can develop new approaches to the climate histories they collected during their research. The event will culminate in a public conference, in which the workshopped research will be presented and discussed. This will lay the groundwork for an edited publication and future research proposal, to be developed during the final months of the grant.The project will maintain a strong presence online through the creation of its own website and associated forum features. This will allow the ongoing collaboration of network members between events, and represent the main point of contact with the general public. In the longer term we aim to explore the development of resources of particular use for teaching in schools, aiming at an audience of GCSE and A-Level Geography students. The materials will introduce various climate histories and illustrate the ways in which climate change is perceived and responded to in different social and cultural settings. Members of the network will also give talks to local/natural history societies and school groups, explaining the main research activities and research findings.