Klimathistorien

Klimathistorien, or climate history, is the study of long-term changes in Earth's climate and the factors that drive them, spanning natural variability as well as human influence. Researchers seek to understand how climates have varied over hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years, and how those changes affected landscapes, ecosystems, and human societies.

Evidence comes from multiple sources. Proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, marine and lake sediments, corals, and cave deposits provide records before reliable thermometers existed. Instrumental data cover the recent centuries, while written records and archaeological findings help extend the history in regional contexts. These records are combined with climate models to reconstruct past temperatures, precipitation, and atmospheric composition.

Major topics include Holocene climate variability, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and abrupt events such as the Younger Dryas and the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. Researchers study drivers of change, including orbital forcing, volcanic activity, solar variability, greenhouse gas concentrations, and aerosol forcing, as well as feedback processes in ice sheets, oceans, and vegetation. Debates continue over the magnitude and timing of certain intervals, particularly in pre-industrial times.

Historically, klimathistorien developed from 19th-century thermometry and geology into a multidisciplinary field that overlaps with archaeology, environmental history, and geoscience. Today it underpins the broader science of climate change by providing baselines, testing hypotheses about natural variability, and informing interpretations of current and future climate trends.

See also: paleoclimatology, climate proxies, dendrochronology, IPCC reports.