Until the first half of the 20th century, mainly geologists and a few biologists studied climates and climate changes of the distant past in paleoclimatology. This research , rested upon studying fossils or geomorphological features like moraines and landscape peculiarities such as erratic blocks from which climatic features and information on the ice ages could be derived (Fairbridge 2009). Around 1900, paleoclimatological studies in geology thrived, before it entered years of stagnation (see Schwarzbach 1949).
From the mid-20th century onwards, a rising number of scientists from other disciplines such as physics, chemistry and biology than discovered paleoclimatology as a field of study. They investigated tree rings, ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, fossilized pollen, moraines, or bones and used them as proxies to retrieve information about the climate in the distant past. Paleoclimatology evolved into a highly interdisciplinary field.
At that time, also a few climatologists began to take a stronger interest in the history of climates and climatic changes. The idea of the static character of climate (at least within human time scales) of classical climatology had still prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. Around 1940, evidence from meteorological records and glaciological investigations had accumulated that the northern Hemisphere, particularly the polar areas, experienced a significant warming episode between about the 1920s and 1940s. This early 20th century warming undermined the idea of static climates and raised many questions: How common were significant climatic changes witin only a few decades? Which were its causes? And what impacts did they have on human societies? (See also modernizing climatology).
English climatologist Hubert H. Lamb pioneered the systematic investigation of historical weather observation series as far back as possible and became one of the founders of historical climatology. He considered the study of past weather data and the reconstruction of past climatic changes as a key to the understanding weather and climate and the atmospheric processes governing it:
"The aim of meteorology in this quest for the facts of the past is to identify the true nature of the weather events and the atmospheric circulation processes at work."
(Lamb 1977: 22)
Lamb collected, studied and evaluated a vast amount of old data series along with other information on weather to reconstruct regional variations and fluctuations of temperature, precipitation and other climatic features as far back as the 18th century. Lamb’s interest, however, was not limited to the reconstruction of past climates. He also engaged in the investigation of the relation of fluctuating climates and human societies culture and life. Lamb, thus, maintained a core interest and tradition in classical climatology: a comprehensive perspective on climate and its relation to human life.
Lamb’s historical climatology seemed an outdated specialty to his superior, director of the Britisch Meteorological Office, John Mason, since the mid-1960s. Lamb, consequently, left the MetOffice and founded the Climatic Research Unit at the University of Eastern Anglia in Norwich (UK) in 1971 (Martin-Nielsen 2015). Its first aim was to “establish further knowledge of the history of climate (in the recent and distant past)” and, hence, continue and expand historical climatology (Lamb 1972).
About two decades later, historical climatology proved to be a most important discipline – although for different reasons than Lamb’s. Data about the past climates turned out to be crucial for the testing and validation of global climate models. Lamb, ironically, had always remained very skeptical and reluctant about mathematical modeling and numerical simulation. He deplored that climate modeling gained priority, whereas the interest in the relations of climate and human conditions, which remained paramount to him, largely passed into oblivion. Today, climate science and climate models rest to a large degree on data established in historical climatology.
"Without [reconstructing the past climate] climatology is in the position of a young science in which little laboratory work has been done to observe the facts of Nature’s behaviour. The past record is also needed to test, calibrate and improve the theoretical models now being worked out in the mathematical laboratories."
Hubert H. Lamb 1977
Sources:
Fairbridge, Rhodes W. 2009: "History of Paleoclimatology", Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments, Vivien Gornitz (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 414-438.
Lamb, Hubert H. 1972: "New Climatic Research Unit at Norwich, England", Quaternary Research 2:4, page 593.
Lamb, Hubert H. 1977: Climate: Present, past and future, vol. 2: Climatic history and the future. London, pages xxix and 22.
Martin-Nielsen, Janet 2015: “Ways of Knowing Climate. Hubert H. Lamb and Climate Research in the UK”, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 6:5, pp. 465-477.
Schwarzbach, Martin 1949: "Das Klima der Vorzeit als Tagungsthema der Hauptversammlung 1951", Geologische Rundschau 37: 1, pp. 139-140.
This is a map with the average pressure from the time between 1790 and 1829 over the North Atlantic and Europe.
And this graph represents the pressure over Trondheim (Norway) each January between 1770 and 1959.
For both illustrations Hubert H. Lamb deducted the necessary data from historical pressure maps in the archive of the UK Meteorological Office.
Source: Lamb, Hubert H./A.I. Johnson 1959: Climatic Variation and Observed Changes in the General Circulation. Geografiska Annaler, vol 41, no. 2/3, p. 107 and 128.
Changes of the average surface temperature from 1870 until 1960. It shows a rise of the global mean temperature of approx. one degree Celsius.
Source: Lamb, Hubert H. 1964: Climatic changes and variations in the atmospheric and ocean circulations, Geologische Rundschau 54:1 (May 1964), p. 495.
