scholarly journals Observations on the connection between glacial phases, natural catastrophes and economic trends of the last millennium in Italy

The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1322-1334
Author(s):  
Pier Luigi Bragato ◽  
Hanspeter Holzhauser

Humanity has often faced critical phases determined by climate changes combined with other natural catastrophes that implied significant socio-economic consequences. In this article, we present an observational study on the possible systematic connection between these factors for the specific case of Italy, comparing the occurrence of pandemics, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions with the glacial history of the last millennium. We have found that the natural catastrophes concentrate in the periods of ice expansion in Europe, whereas the phenomena are in attenuation in the current phase of global warming. Such a behavior has influenced the economy of the country: in fact, a comparison with a reconstruction of the per capita Gross Domestic Product since 1310 shows that the periods of maximum economic expansion occurred during the deglaciation phases. This study has confirmed the general connection of the climate with a number of Earth processes and the difficulty to foresee its changes. Furthermore, the extension of the analysis at the world level for the last 2500 years has evidenced that different types of pandemics (plague, cholera and influenza) almost exclusively spread during the phases of glacial expansion.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Scott A. Reynhout ◽  
Michael R. Kaplan ◽  
Esteban A. Sagredo ◽  
Juan Carlos Aravena ◽  
Rodrigo L. Soteres ◽  
...  

Abstract In the Cordillera Darwin, southernmost South America, we used 10Be and 14C dating, dendrochronology, and historical observations to reconstruct the glacial history of the Dalla Vedova valley from deglacial time to the present. After deglacial recession into northeastern Darwin and Dalla Vedova, by ~16 ka, evidence indicates a glacial advance at ~13 ka coeval with the Antarctic Cold Reversal. The next robustly dated glacial expansion occurred at 870 ± 60 calendar yr ago (approximately AD 1150), followed by less-extensive dendrochronologically constrained advances from shortly before AD 1836 to the mid-twentieth century. Our record is consistent with most studies within the Cordillera Darwin that show that the Holocene glacial maximum occurred during the last millennium. This pattern contrasts with the extensive early- and mid-Holocene glacier expansions farther north in Patagonia; furthermore, an advance at 870 ± 60 yr ago may suggest out-of-phase glacial advances occurred within the Cordillera Darwin relative to Patagonia. We speculate that a southward shift of westerlies and associated climate regimes toward the southernmost tip of the continent, about 900–800 yr ago, provides a mechanism by which some glaciers advanced in the Cordillera Darwin during what is generally considered a warm and dry period to the north in Patagonia.


Author(s):  
Richard T. Corlett

This chapter covers the environmental history of Tropical East Asia, starting with its assembly from Gondwanan fragments during the Mesozoic. Changes in sea level, climate, and vegetation are covered in increasing detail from the Eocene to the present day, and the influence of volcanic eruptions and other natural catastrophes is discussed. The history of human occupation is outlined, from the appearance of Homo erectus more than a million years ago, through the arrival of modern humans in the region 80,000–50,000 years ago, to the spread of agriculture and the development of urban settlements. Human impacts on natural ecosystems are considered throughout the period of occupation, culminating in the concept of the human-dominated Anthropocene.


Tellus B ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Brovkin ◽  
Stephan J. Lorenz ◽  
Johann Jungclaus ◽  
Thomas Raddatz ◽  
Claudia Timmreck ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Konstantin Kupchenko ◽  
Nikolay Fedoskin

The article analyzes the results of the state policy implementation withing the formation and development of the Soviet judicial system on the example of Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors set the goal, based on the analysis of sources not introduced into a wide scientific circulation, primarily stored at the State Archive of the Smolensk Region to restore the history of the creation and operation of justice institutions in the Smolensk region in the 1918s–1923s. The source base of the study was composed of documents stored at Smolensk State Regional Archive, materials on the history of the judiciary, statistical materials of the period under the study, documents on the history of the party-state bodies of the Smolensk region. The article studies current office documentation of both the higher and regional state bodies (Workers 'and Peasants' Government, People's Commissariat of Justice, Smolensk Governoral Executive Committee) and local authorities (Smolensk Council of Working People's Deputies, Executive Committee of Smolensk Governoral Council of Workers, Peasants' and Red Army Deputies), as well as Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors analyze the Soviet experience in the formation and development of judicial bodies under specific historical conditions; they consider transformations in the judicial system of the Smolensk Governorate in the 1917s–1922s, as well as the formation of Smolensk Governoral Court. The article studies legal foundations of the Soviet judicial system formation, characterizes processes of creating a judicial apparatus in the first years of Soviet power and analyzes activities of Smolensk Governoral Court during its formation. The authors reveal the essence, degree of efficiency, concrete results, political and socio-economic consequences, positive and negative lessons from the Soviet judicial system existed in Russia. The authors assume that the development of new legislation system in the 1920s was caused by the need to reform legal sources as the main means of socialism building. The authors conclude that the transformation of the Soviet judicial system completed the transition from the principle of «revolutionary expediency» to the principle of «revolutionary legality».


1943 ◽  
Vol 3 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Curtis P. Nettels

One influence of war has repeatedly asserted itself in the past—an effect on the costs of production and on the competitive position of the industries and firms of victorious or neutral nations. This subject needs more study, but certain facts suggest a hypothesis, of three parts. First: war expands some industries or concerns, increases their efficiency, enables them to operate, at the end of the struggle, on a comparatively low-cost basis, intensifies their competitive advantages, and improves their position in relation to foreign competitors. Second: war—for the duration—bolsters up some high-cost units by enabling them to sell at a profit all they can produce. The end of the war places such high-cost units at a disadvantage in the process of absorbing the shocks of the transition to a peacetime economy. Third: the history of postwar periods usually exhibits a sharp contest between such low-cost and high-cost enterprises. While “low cost” and “high cost” may refer to the relative positions of units within the same country, in most of this discussion, the terms will be applied to the producers of one country (either victor or neutral) to mean that their costs are low or high in comparison with those of their foreign competitors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Alexis D. Litvine

Abstract This article is a reminder that the concept of ‘annihilation of space’ or ‘spatial compression’, often used as a shorthand for referring to the cultural or economic consequences of industrial mobility, has a long intellectual history. The concept thus comes loaded with a specific outlook on the experience of modernity, which is – I argue – unsuitable for any cultural or social history of space. This article outlines the etymology of the concept and shows: first, that the historical phenomena it pretends to describe are too complex for such a simplistic signpost; and, second, that the term is never a neutral descriptor but always an engagement with a form of historical and cultural mediation on the nature of modernity in relation to space. In both cases this term obfuscates more than it reveals. As a counter-example, I look at the effect of the railways on popular representations of space and conclude that postmodern geography is a relative dead end for historians interested in the social and cultural history of space.


1992 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne L. Cohen ◽  
John E. Parkington ◽  
Geoff B. Brundrit ◽  
Nikolaas J. van der Merwe

AbstractDetails of short-term climatic variability are often lost from marine sediments through bioturbation in the upper, aerobic sediment layers. Alternatively, a high-resolution and dated record of climatic events may be obtained using material preserved in archaeological deposits. The Holocene history of the southern Benguela upwelling regime has been constructed from the oxygen isotope and mineral analysis of midden shells. Three discrete episodes of significant isotope enrichment corresponded to periods of glacial expansion in the northern hemisphere. Significant changes in shell mineralogy, which is a response to sea-surface temperatures, were also recorded. The timing and duration of these changes approximated those in the isotope record and may provide a link between events affecting the subcontinent and global temperature changes of the late Quaternary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (01) ◽  
pp. 212-217
Author(s):  
Nazim Mammadov

Years of 1950—1960 are a difficult, contradictory period of creation in the history of the Fatherland, the Кarabaкh region of Azerbaijan. During these years, the Soviet political regime was further strengthened in the Azerbaijan SSR. Over the years, the heavy economic consequences of the 1941—1945 war were eliminated. New industrial centers appeared in the Azerbaijan SSR, in particular in the Кarabaкh region of the country.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1645-1662
Author(s):  
Alan Huston ◽  
Nicholas Siler ◽  
Gerard H. Roe ◽  
Erin Pettit ◽  
Nathan J. Steiger

Abstract. Changes in glacier length reflect the integrated response to local fluctuations in temperature and precipitation resulting from both external forcing (e.g., volcanic eruptions or anthropogenic CO2) and internal climate variability. In order to interpret the climate history reflected in the glacier moraine record, the influence of both sources of climate variability must therefore be considered. Here we study the last millennium of glacier-length variability across the globe using a simple dynamic glacier model, which we force with temperature and precipitation time series from a 13-member ensemble of simulations from a global climate model. The ensemble allows us to quantify the contributions to glacier-length variability from external forcing (given by the ensemble mean) and internal variability (given by the ensemble spread). Within this framework, we find that internal variability is the predominant source of length fluctuations for glaciers with a shorter response time (less than a few decades). However, for glaciers with longer response timescales (more than a few decades) external forcing has a greater influence than internal variability. We further find that external forcing also dominates when the response of glaciers from widely separated regions is averaged. Single-forcing simulations indicate that, for this climate model, most of the forced response over the last millennium, pre-anthropogenic warming, has been driven by global-scale temperature change associated with volcanic aerosols.


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