How could phenological records from the Chinese poems of the Tang and Song Dynasties (618–1260 AD) be reliable evidence of past climate changes?

Abstract. Phenological records in historical documents have been proved to be of unique value for reconstructing past climate changes. As a literary genre, poetry reached its peak period in the Tang and Song Dynasties (618–1260 AD) in China, which could provide abundant phenological records in this period when lacking phenological observations. However, the reliability of phenological records from poems as well as their processing methods remains to be comprehensively summarized and discussed. In this paper, after introducing the certainties and uncertainties of phenological information in poems, the key processing steps and methods for deriving phenological records from poems and using them in past climate change studies were discussed: (1) two principles namely the principle of conservative and the principle of personal experience should be followed to reduce the uncertainties; (2) the phenological records in poems need to be filtered according to the types of poems, the background information, the rhetorical devices and the spatial representations; (3) the animals and plants are identified to species level according to their modern distributions and the sequences of different phenophases; (4) the phenophases in poems are identified on the basis of modern observation criterion; (5) the dates and sites for the phenophases in poems are confirmed from background information and related studies. Finally, the temperature anomalies reconstructed by phenological records from poems were compared with those reconstructed by other historical documents in published studies to demonstrate the validity and reliability of phenological records from poems in studies of past climate changes. This paper proved that the phenological records from poems could be useful evidence of past climate changes after being scientifically processed and also provides a reference in both principle and methodology for the extraction and application of phenological records from poems.

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Could phenological records from Chinese poems of the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279 CE) be reliable evidence of past climate changes?

Climate of the Past ◽

10.5194/cp-17-929-2021 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 929-950

Author(s):

Yachen Liu ◽

Xiuqi Fang ◽

Junhu Dai ◽

Huanjiong Wang ◽

Zexing Tao

Keyword(s):

Tang Dynasty ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Background Information ◽

Chinese History ◽

Validity And Reliability ◽

Past Climate ◽

Tang And Song Dynasties ◽

The Tang Dynasty ◽

Past Climate Change ◽

Phenological Records

Abstract. Phenological records in historical documents have been proven to be of unique value for reconstructing past climate changes. As a literary genre, poetry reached its peak in the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279 CE) in China. Sources from this period could provide abundant phenological records in the absence of phenological observations. However, the reliability of phenological records from poems, as well as their processing methods, remains to be comprehensively summarized and discussed. In this paper, after introducing the certainties and uncertainties of phenological information in poems, the key processing steps and methods for deriving phenological records from poems and using them in past climate change studies are discussed: (1) two principles, namely the principle of conservatism and the principle of personal experience, should be followed to reduce uncertainties; (2) the phenological records in poems need to be filtered according to the types of poems, background information, rhetorical devices, spatial representations, and human influence; (3) animals and plants are identified at the species level according to their modern distributions and the sequences of different phenophases; (4) phenophases in poems are identified on the basis of modern observation criteria; (5) the dates and sites for the phenophases in poems are confirmed from background information and related studies. As a case study, 86 phenological records from poems of the Tang Dynasty in the Guanzhong region in China were extracted to reconstruct annual temperature anomalies in specific years in the period between 600 and 900 CE. Following this, the reconstruction from poems was compared with relevant reconstructions in published studies to demonstrate the validity and reliability of phenological records from poems in studies of past climate changes. This paper reveals that the phenological records from poems could be useful evidence of past climate changes after being scientifically processed. This could provide an important reference for future studies in this domain, in both principle and methodology, pursuant of extracting and applying phenological records from poems for larger areas and different periods in Chinese history.

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Past climate change questioned

Nature ◽

10.1038/news040927-16 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Quirin Schiermeier

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Past Climate ◽

Past Climate Change

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CHRONOLOGY IN DISCERNING PATTERNS AND DRIVERS OF PAST CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE WESTERN US

10.1130/abs/2018am-321913 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Susan Herrgesell Zimmerman ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Past Climate ◽

Western Us ◽

Past Climate Change

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d4PDF: large-ensemble and high-resolution climate simulations for global warming risk assessment

Progress in Earth and Planetary Science ◽

10.1186/s40645-020-00367-7 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Masayoshi Ishii ◽

Nobuhito Mori

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Global Warming ◽

High Resolution ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Future Climate ◽

Atmospheric Models ◽

Large Ensemble ◽

Past Climate ◽

The Past ◽

Climate Simulations

Abstract A large-ensemble climate simulation database, which is known as the database for policy decision-making for future climate changes (d4PDF), was designed for climate change risk assessments. Since the completion of the first set of climate simulations in 2015, the database has been growing continuously. It contains the results of ensemble simulations conducted over a total of thousands years respectively for past and future climates using high-resolution global (60 km horizontal mesh) and regional (20 km mesh) atmospheric models. Several sets of future climate simulations are available, in which global mean surface air temperatures are forced to be higher by 4 K, 2 K, and 1.5 K relative to preindustrial levels. Nonwarming past climate simulations are incorporated in d4PDF along with the past climate simulations. The total data volume is approximately 2 petabytes. The atmospheric models satisfactorily simulate the past climate in terms of climatology, natural variations, and extreme events such as heavy precipitation and tropical cyclones. In addition, data users can obtain statistically significant changes in mean states or weather and climate extremes of interest between the past and future climates via a simple arithmetic computation without any statistical assumptions. The database is helpful in understanding future changes in climate states and in attributing past climate events to global warming. Impact assessment studies for climate changes have concurrently been performed in various research areas such as natural hazard, hydrology, civil engineering, agriculture, health, and insurance. The database has now become essential for promoting climate and risk assessment studies and for devising climate adaptation policies. Moreover, it has helped in establishing an interdisciplinary research community on global warming across Japan.

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Past climate changes and permafrost depth at the Lake El'gygytgyn site: implications from data and thermal modeling

Climate of the Past ◽

10.5194/cp-9-119-2013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 119-133 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

D. Mottaghy ◽

G. Schwamborn ◽

V. Rath

Keyword(s):

Surface Temperature ◽

Thermal Regime ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Ground Surface ◽

Temperature Data ◽

Ice Age ◽

Drilling Process ◽

Past Climate ◽

Ground Surface Temperature ◽

Recent Climate

Abstract. This study focuses on the temperature field observed in boreholes drilled as part of interdisciplinary scientific campaign targeting the El'gygytgyn Crater Lake in NE Russia. Temperature data are available from two sites: the lake borehole 5011-1 located near the center of the lake reaching 400 m depth, and the land borehole 5011-3 at the rim of the lake, with a depth of 140 m. Constraints on permafrost depth and past climate changes are derived from numerical simulation of the thermal regime associated with the lake-related talik structure. The thermal properties of the subsurface needed for these simulations are based on laboratory measurements of representative cores from the quaternary sediments and the underlying impact-affected rock, complemented by further information from geophysical logs and data from published literature. The temperature observations in the lake borehole 5011-1 are dominated by thermal perturbations related to the drilling process, and thus only give reliable values for the lowermost value in the borehole. Undisturbed temperature data recorded over more than two years are available in the 140 m deep land-based borehole 5011-3. The analysis of these observations allows determination of not only the recent mean annual ground surface temperature, but also the ground surface temperature history, though with large uncertainties. Although the depth of this borehole is by far too insufficient for a complete reconstruction of past temperatures back to the Last Glacial Maximum, it still affects the thermal regime, and thus permafrost depth. This effect is constrained by numerical modeling: assuming that the lake borehole observations are hardly influenced by the past changes in surface air temperature, an estimate of steady-state conditions is possible, leading to a meaningful value of 14 ± 5 K for the post-glacial warming. The strong curvature of the temperature data in shallower depths around 60 m can be explained by a comparatively large amplitude of the Little Ice Age (up to 4 K), with low temperatures prevailing far into the 20th century. Other mechanisms, like varying porosity, may also have an influence on the temperature profile, however, our modeling studies imply a major contribution from recent climate changes.

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