"Spaces of experience and horizons of expectation": the implications of extreme weather events, past, present and future

预测未来的气候，并确定不同的社区可能如何受到气候变化的影响并对其做出反应，已成为一个具有全球重要性的问题。人们越来越关注年际气候变化以及干旱、洪水、风暴和异常高温或低温等异常和“极端”天气事件的影响。虽然社会和经济系统的演变通常会适应一些与正常天气条件不同的情况，但极端情况下很少会出现这种情况。因此，在所有气候变化中，这类事件可能产生最大和最直接的社会和经济影响。然而，极端天气事件既是物质事件，也是社会文本--除了是生物物理事件，它们也是社会和文化构建和解释的。地理环境影响个人和社区体验自然世界的方式。不同的区域环境、特定的自然条件、一个地区的社会和经济活动以及根深蒂固的文化知识、规范、价值观、做法和基础设施都会影响社区对极端天气的体验、反应和反应。极端天气的影响甚至可能因人而异，这取决于多种因素，而这些因素又由文化和历史经验所决定。人们体验和感知极端事件的方式决定了它是否会以口头历史、意识形态、习俗、行为、叙事、人工制品、技术和物理适应的形式铭刻在社区或个人的记忆中，包括对工作环境和建筑环境的适应。这些不同的记忆和记录过去的形式代表了中央媒体，通过这些媒体，关于过去事件的信息被策划、循环和在几代人之间传播。在这方面，对不寻常或极端事件的经历或认识可以有效地决定人们如何理解和应对与未来极端事件的时机和影响有关的风险和不确定性问题。构建特定区域的气候历史和历史极端天气事件，以及调查对这些事件的记忆和反应，必须成为任何试图了解未来可能发生的事件的性质的研究的重要组成部分。如果我们能够评估不同情况下的不同社区可能如何受到未来事件的影响、理解和应对，这些历史也很重要。因此，拟议项目的目的是研究英国极端气候的性质、时机、社会经济和文化后果以及对这些极端气候的反应。这将通过在英国各地进行一系列基于案例研究的调查来实现，调查范围将涵盖1700年至今的较长时期。这项研究将采用档案调查和口述历史相结合的方法，以构建极端天气事件，并探索这些事件是否以及如何影响当地人民的生活，并成为案例研究区域内选定的当地社区的文化结构和社会记忆的一部分。我们还将探索这些事件的记录是如何随着时间的推移而发生变化的。该项目将与一些非学术合作伙伴合作，这些合作伙伴的角色需要了解极端事件的历史及其文化含义。具体地说，我们将与英国遗产和气象局合作，通过他们的地球上大气环流重建(ALAR)倡议。该项目将帮助这两个机构更好地了解极端天气对它们所在地区和社区的文化影响，以及它们可能预测其工作中未来影响的方式。

Predicting the climate of the future and determining how different communities might be affected by and respond to climate change has become an issue of global importance. There is growing concern over the impacts of interannual climate variability and anomalous and 'extreme' weather events such as droughts, floods, storm events and unusually high or low temperatures. While social and economic systems have generally evolved to accommodate some deviations from 'normal' weather conditions, this is rarely true of extremes. For this reason, such events can have the greatest and most immediate social and economic impact of all climate changes. Yet extreme weather events are as much social texts as material occurrences - as well as being biophysical events, they are also socially and culturally constructed and interpreted. Geographical context influences how individuals and communities experience the natural world. Different regional circumstances, particular physical conditions, an area's social and economic activities and embedded cultural knowledges, norms, values, practices and infrastructures all affect community experiences, reactions and responses to extreme weather. The impact of extreme weather may even vary between individuals, depending on a multitude of factors, which are in turn informed by cultural and historical experiences.The way in which an extreme event is experienced and perceived determines whether it becomes inscribed into the memory of a community or an individual in the form of oral history, ideology, custom, behaviour, narrative, artefact, technological and physical adaptation, including adaptations to the working landscape and built environment. These different forms of remembering and recording the past represent central media through which information on past events is curated, recycled and transmitted across generations. In this regard, experience or awareness of unusual or extreme events can effectively condition how people comprehend and respond to the problems of risk and uncertainty with respect to the timing and impact of extreme events in the future. The construction of regionally specific climatic histories and historical extreme weather events, and investigations of the memories of and responses to these events, must form a crucial component of any research that seeks to understand the nature of events that might take place in the future. These histories are also important if we are to be able to assess how different communities in different contexts might be affected by, comprehend and respond to future events. The purpose of the proposed project, therefore, is to examine the nature, timing and socio-economic and cultural consequences of, and responses to, climatic extremes in the UK. This will be achieved through a series of case study-based investigations across the UK and will cover an extended period between 1700 and the present. This study will employ a combination of archival investigation and oral history approaches in order to construct episodes of extreme weather and to explore whether and how these events affected the lives of local people and became inscribed into the cultural fabric and social memory of selected local communities within the case study regions. We will also explore how the recording of these events has changed overtime and is still changing.The project will work in concert with a number of non academic partners whose roles necessitate an understanding of the history of extreme events and their cultural implications. Specifically we will collaborate with English Heritage and the Meteorological Office through their Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions Over the Earth (ACRE) initiative. The project will help both institutions better appreciate the cultural implications of extreme weather in the regions and communities within which they operate and the ways in which they might anticipate future impacts in their work.