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 History of Meteorology 2 (2005) 37 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Diversity in the Global Reconstruction and Representation of Weather and Climate: 

East, South, West, North 

 

Papers from the 2005 Beijing International Congress of History of Science 

 

Edited by Louis K.McNally III and Christian Rohr 

 

Symposium Editors’ Introduction 

 

In July 2005 the XXII
nd

 International Congress of History of Science met in Beijing, 

China, under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, 

Division of History of Science, with the general theme of “Globalization and Diversity: 

Diffusion of Science and Technology throughout History.”  As part of the Congress, the 

International Commission on History of Meteorology sponsored a symposium convened by 

James Fleming (USA), Rudolph Brádzil (Czech Republic), Cornelia Lüdecke (Germany), and 

Youngsin Chun (Republic of Korea) entitled “Diversity in the Global Reconstruction and 

Representation of Weather and Climate: East, South, West, North.”  Thirteen papers were 

presented, and eight are published here, representing authors from  seven different nations. 

The Commission hopes that symposia like these will develop into a primary source for 

dissemination of research results for climate scientists who use historical data as their source for 

study, and for historians who look to extract climatological information from as-yet unused 

sources.  Whether the historical data used are logbooks from ships plying the English Channel, 

reports of missionaries in the high Arctic, records of bridge masters and tollhouse operators on 

the rivers of Europe, diarists in North America and the Low Countries, Byzantine Church 

records, or the length of ancient European leg bones, they represent a uniquely human record of 

the weather, unlike any other proxies used for climatic reconstruction today.  Specific 

methodologies, from content analysis to cultural analysis, to forensic synoptic analysis are today 

converging to allow researchers of these historic data an opportunity to unlock the secrets of the 

weather of the past, as well as acquiring insight into the life experience of the observers, without 

cultural bias. 

Combined with modern-day computer modeling, we are now approaching a better 

understanding of both changes in climate and their effects on the human condition.  A firmer 

foundation for forecasting future effects is developing from the use of historical records.  

Without the interdisciplinary work done from this historical and very human point of view, the 

insights and results presented here would not be possible.  Without history, and the attention paid 

to it by both cultural and climate researchers, the emerging science of paleotempestology would 

not exist.  Without interdisciplinary work of the kind presented here, much insight and 

knowledge might remain within the purview of individual disciplines. 



 Symposium Editors’ Introduction 38 
 

 

We encourage historians to realize the importance of any archive as a potential weather 

record, and suggest that they work together with climate researchers, using and refining the 

methodologies outlined herein, to bring this new interdisciplinary insight to the community at 

large.  We hope also that work presented here will both generate interest among historians to 

develop further research, and encourage climate scientists to make use of the very valuable 

resource that historical records can now provide to them.  Key questions about climate change 

remain.  We hope that the additional input gleaned from history will help with the answers. 

The papers are presented on the order of the centuries from which documentary evidence 

is garnered, beginning with Ioannis Telelis, whose data extend back to the 4th century C.E.  

Adriaan de Kraker uses data from the 14
th

 and 15
th

 centuries, Christian Rohr from the 15
th

 and 

16
th

 centuries, Jian Liu, et al, from the 16
th

 to the 19
th

 centuries, Louis McNally from the late 18
th

 

century, Cornelia Leudeke from the 18
th

 and 19
th
 centuries, Dennis Wheeler from the 18

th
 and 

19
th

 centuries, and Nikola Koepke and Joerg Baten examine the last two millennia.   

Ioannis Telelis is a specialist on Byzantine sources related to climate and weather.  Most 

of these sources are neglected in the well known “weather compilations” of Hennig (1904), 

Easton (1928) and Weikinn (1958).  The author’s two-volume collection from 2004 was able to 

fill this lacuna.  Most of his sources are narrative ones determined by social and religious 

preconceptions.  The author did not make any systematic attempt to explore the working of 

weather phenomena.  The structure of the meteorological information is discontinuous and 

heterogeneous.  Nevertheless, Telelis provides a typological and geographical distribution of 

documentary paleoclimatic information derived from Byzantine sources.   He points to more 

work to be done, since detailed climatic fluctuations cannot be reconstructed on the basis of this 

type of meteorological data alone. 

Adriaan de Kraker focuses on the reconstruction of storms in Belgium and in the 

Southwestern part of the Netherlands.  His study is based on written archival sources from 

smaller towns situated near the North Sea shore.  The town accounts are quite homogeneous for 

the period between 1400 and 1625 and are therefore excellent long-time proxy data.  In this way, 

a period of significant increasing storminess during the second half of the 16th century can be 

identified.  The connection between a drop in temperature during the same period is, however, 

only a weak one.  On the other hand, he is able to draw connections between storminess and 

annual summer temperature especially for the 15th century: there are far more storms in warm 

summers than in cold ones. 

Christian Rohr examines the reactions to floods of the people living close to the Danube 

River and its catch area in Austria between the 14
th

 and 17
th

 centuries.  He uses a “mentality 

bound approach,” which asks about the perception, interpretation, management and cultural 

responses to floods.  He tries to contextualize non-instrumental records on floods, such as the 

“millennium flood” of 1501, by reconstructing the “normal” floods as well.  The accounts of the 

bridge master of Wels provide detailed insights into the history of floods and their management 

during the 15
th

 and 16
th

 centuries.  Through the expenses for the craftsmen many more floods can 

be reconstructed than through annalistic or normative sources. 

The paper by Jian Liu, Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita, Xing Chen and Sumin Wang is 

somewhat experimental.  They attempt to compare reconstructed decadal temperature series of 

eight regions in China to two multi-century computer simulations.  The climate model for these 

simulations includes time variable volcanic aerosols, solar output and atmospheric greenhouse 

gas concentrations.  The period from the Little Ice Age (1550-1850) to the end of the twentieth 

century always provides a “hockey-stick” pattern.  From the beginning of the twentieth century 



 History of Meteorology 2 (2005) 39 
 

 
onwards, the increase of temperatures is significant.  What may be more important is the use of 

computer modelling in an attempt to match reconstructed records, as opposed to forecasting the 

trends. 

Louis McNally reconstructs the global weather of a single year by comparing proxy data 

from all over the world.  He applies his “Forensic Synoptic Analysis” technique to reconstruct 

the upper-air circulation of the year 1785.  He identifies the upper flow over northeastern North 

America, and then collects data for North America, Iceland and the Arctic region, the Atlantic 

Ocean and Europe, India, China, Japan and the Pacific Ocean, and for the Tropics and the 

Southern Hemisphere.  The reconstruction is completed using these and other proxy studies and 

tracking the volcanic signal from contemporary eruptions.  The results agree with a theory by 

Lamb (1977) for the general circulation of the atmosphere at the beginning of the last ice age.  

He presumes a relatively cold flow over central and eastern North America for most of the year 

1785, and a “short-circuit cross-polar flow” which infers a preferential displacement of the polar 

cell to a position over the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Cornelia Luedecke’s article leads us into the arctic climate of Greenland.  The 

Moravians, a pre-reformation Protestant group, later on called Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde after 

a village in Saxonia, settled down in Greenland and Moravia during the 18
th

 and 19
th

 centuries.  

They did not only try to convert the indigenous Eskimo population, but also made very accurate 

observations of the weather.  Their records played a major role within the global meteorological 

network of the Societas Meteorologica Palatina in Mannheim (Germany).  At the end of the 

1830’s, Johann von Lamont, an astronomer from the observatory of Munich, received many of 

the Greenland and Labrador observational data.  So, they survived in an institute of the Technical 

University of Munich at Weihenstephan and will be digitized soon. 

Dennis Wheeler presents results from a recently completed CLIWOC (Climatological 

Database for the World’s Oceans) project funded by the European Union.  He uses logbooks for 

the reconstruction of daily oceanic weather.  The earlier observations are non-instrumental and 

have to be translated into modern scales such as the Beaufort wind force scale.  The use of these 

sources is still in its infancy, although they provide a unique insight into the climate of past 

centuries.  About 120,000 logbooks from 1680 to 1850 can be found in British archives alone.  

The CLIWOC database extends this to a comparison of logbooks from different European 

countries. 

Nikola Koepke and Joerg Baten examine climate and economic history from an unusual 

point of view.  Koepke, originally trained as an archaeologist for Early Medieval burial places, 

argues that anthropometric indices are an important proxy variable, reflecting the climate and the 

quality and quantity of nutrition.  The study uses recent estimates of human stature over the last 

two millennia in the west of central Europe, in the European Mediterranean and in North-East 

Europe.  Through a comparison with estimates of temperature it becomes clear that the impact of 

temperature is economically, but not statistically significant.  It is remarkable that after the High 

Middle Ages, when population density had increased to a previously unknown level, the 

European population became more vulnerable to climatic shocks.  On the other hand, a lower 

population like during the Migration Period Pessimum, provided a better nutritional status and an 

increased average height. 

The fact that documentary (and other) evidence is now being used in the reconstruction of 

weather, climate, and the human condition points the way to an exciting future for 

interdisciplinary and international collaboration and comparison.  The ICHM intends to play an 

important role in facilitating and communicating such efforts.   



 Symposium Editors’ Introduction 40 
 

 

Special thanks are due to Roger Williams, Mark Guishard and Brian Kolts, Bermuda 

Weather Service; Kirk Maasch, University of Maine—Orono; and Christine Holden, University 

of Southern Maine. 

 

Louis K. McNally III 

St. George’s, Bermuda 

 

Christian Rohr 

Salzburg, Austria 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authors and titles of other symposium papers presented in Beijing 

 

Aryan F.V. van Engelen (The Netherlands), How weather and climate could be deduced from 

historical sources and how weather and climate could influence the course of history: A 

reconstruction for the Low Countries from AD 800 onwards. 

Zhang De-er (China), Variation of Dry-Wet Climate and Severe Drought Events as Revealed in 

the Climate Records of China over the Past 1000 Years. 

Youngsin Chun (Republic of Korea), Recovering the Historical Meaning of Asian Dust Events 

(in Korea). 

Xing Chen (China), Hans von Storch (Germany), Jian Liu (China), Eduardo Zorita (Germany), 

Jingyun Zheng (China), Simulated and reconstructed temperature anomalies of eastern 

China for the last millennium. 

Don Garden (Australia), Droughts and Flooding Rains: Understanding El Niño and La Niña in 

Australia. 

 


