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Strengthen the resilience to climate change |
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History
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The biomes are distributions of plants and
animals determined by climate and in balance with it provided it does not change
too fast. They can be reconstituted with reasonable confidence based on pale
ontological sources. We present here maps of biomes covering the interval
between the last glacial maximum (there are 18 000 years) and the present.
Since the last glaciations during the ice sheets
have maintained their quasi-configuration for a maximum period of approximately
10 000 years, distribution of vegetation during the last glacial maximum was
probably almost as much in balance with the contemporary climate that is the
case under our current climate. The subsequent changes in the distribution of
biomes during deglutination and thereafter reflect the complex interaction of
forcing the climate and dynamic limiting speeds migration of plants.
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Europe had lived through the period of "medieval optimum |
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History
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In the early 1900, the global climate began to
warm up. This is visible in Figure 1-1 shows that the average temperature of the
Earth's surface from 1880 to 1999. The temperature is a weighted average on the
continents and oceans compiled by NOAA using technology developed by Quayle et
al. In the graph, the temperature zero corresponds to that of 1950. The fine
line shows the monthly temperatures and the thick line shows the annual average.
The figure shows that the 20th century had seen a rise in temperature of almost
1 ° C. This might seem little but the effects are discernible. In Europe, major
glaciers in the Alps, such as the Mer de Glace near Chamonix, have shrunk and
canals of Holland would freeze almost as they were before, when Hans Brinker
entered the legend of the sport skating on ice. The effects to other parts of
the globe were more severe, with large shares of Central Africa, once fertile,
which become dry and unable to sustain a large population. Although the reasons
for such a warming is not fully understood, many climatologists believe that
this is the result of an addition of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere by man .
Figure 1.1: global warming
The more we go back in time, fewer historical records are reliable. Fortunately,
Nature has its own recording system. As we will explain in Chapter 4, the
measurement of isotopes of oxygen provides an estimate temperatures rose with
the total volume of ice on the planet, a combination also interesting that the
measure of temperature alone, if not more . Data from a drilling glaciers km
deep in the glaciers of Groeland project Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2) are
shown in Figure 1-2. By way of comparison, the zero temperature for this chart
has been set at the same value of the chart above. For historical study, we
scored a few events in the history of Europe.
The cooling period which preceded the 20th
century is over now a hollow which lasted 700 years. This period is called "the
little ice age" (the coldest periods, around 1400 and 1700, are sometimes called
ice ages 2 small). In his story well known in the history of the 14th century,
historian Barbara W. Thuchman claims that cold temperatures were at the root of
social conflicts and low production of food and were thus responsible for the
famine, war and perhaps even the plague. Just a few centuries ago, at the
beginning of the second millennium.
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History and climate are inseparable |
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History
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Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a member of the Institute
and professor emeritus at the College de France, written since the 1960's,
history of the climate of Western Europe and its impacts on humans. He recently
published the second volume of his "Human history and compared the climate - The
time of revolutions." It is up to us on the major climatic events that have
marked our history.
Since when you interested in the history of climate?
This dates back to 1950 years. My interest in climate probably comes from
my rural origins. My father was a farmer. And I've seen the ruin because of poor
harvests. In addition, my master Fernand Braudel had a sense for what affected
the climate. He was the first, from 1949, to report the surge of alpine glaciers
at the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Above all, I think I saw
what others did not. That is what we call a look!
What sources do you use to reconstruct the past climate?
They are an incredible variety. There is obviously the timing of harvest.
To prevent the theft of grapes, the opening of the harvest was a public document
noted in the municipal registers. But the first date harvest is an excellent
indicator of the temperature of the spring and summer. Précoces, they sign a
been a hot spring. Delayed, a spring and summer rather fresh. In France, these
dates are recorded since about 1370. So it is a measuring instrument quite
convenient, even if they do not, of course, the accuracy of a thermometer! The
milestones are also very useful. When a priest wrote in the records that the
nearby river is frozen for a month and carts passing above, here means it was
-10 ° C. In Spain, ceremonies rogations are the key to reconstruct the climatic
history. This religious ritual organized to face the weather, varied depending
on the type and severity of the problem. In case of drought, a prayer is said in
the cathedral. If the situation worsens, processions are held. Then the statue
of Saint protector is beaten or drowned. Finally, if çà becomes catastrophic,
people go on pilgrimage to Saint Jacques de Compostela. The Church making
service, all details regarding these rogations include systematically in the
books of the church and the municipality. This information helps to draw up a
history of rainfall. The challenge is to make sufficiently long series.
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The climate has always varied |
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History
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The climate has always varied: it revealed what many
scientific work. In the journal Nature (Nature 429, p623, 10 June 2004), 55
European researchers have worked together and highlighted 8 climatic cycles
until today, and tracing the history of climate on some 730,000 years.
In 1999, Petit et al., Published in Nature, (June 1999), a first series of
measures average temperatures and the CO2 content of the atmosphere over 400,000
years. These measures are presented on the figures attached. They showed already
the existence of 4 climatic cycles and a concentration of atmospheric CO2
evolving similarly.
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The history of climate is linked to current concerns |
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History
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The history of climate is linked to current
concerns, the greenhouse effect, but in this conference today, I am interested
more in the past, a past that would leave the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
which would continue until 'Today, I tried to describe it in a book entitled
Human History and compared the climate published by Fayard, I use here.
Such a history should deal with global climate as a whole, but I'm not a
planetologist, and therefore my study here, mainly the north of France (as the
Mediterranean climate is a little different). By against my study is also
interested in temperate zones just over northern Europe, such as Belgium,
Benelux, England, West Germany, Scandinavia, but not Russia, too remote.
Why I concerned myself from 1957 to the history of climate? At the time I
was influenced by Marxism and a kind of scientism (I have since evolved, but it
remains to me a little something), the rest I have always regretted that the
Marxist (except) do not consider climate: in fact they do that social relations
and material production, yet the climate, according to their vocabulary, is the
basis of a "productive power."
And then I was also interested in what is called the little ice age (CPA)
in the seventeenth century and the general crisis of the seventeenth century.
Was there a relationship between this little ice age, this cooling sensitive
glaciers in the Alps not so far away from here, and a general trend towards the
economic crisis in the seventeenth century? I went to inspect on site the
evolution of Alpine glaciers, when I was more sports, while following what was
published about them (the carbon-14 dating, etc.). I am also much interested in
the growth of trees (the rings), dendrochronology, although personally I have
not practiced, but I followed the work done in this regard.
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The Kushans in the history of central Asia and India |
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History
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The Empire kouchan holds a very important place in the history of North India.
For two centuries at least, there played a dominant role at that point, decades
after his fall, the founder of the great Indian dynasty Guptas have vanta to
have destroyed and, with the types used by its monetary sovereign, introduced
himself as his successor. The texts of India kept almost completely ignore its
existence, as they almost totally unaware that the dynasty Mauryas which India
is now so proud. Like so many dynasties and peoples of Central Asia and India is
the numismatic, archaeology and epigraphy that we owe the resurrection of its
history, which was particularly Gerard committed Fussman.
Scientific publications, a scholarly sort of deformity, give too much emphasis
on chronology. For over a century, indeed, scientists have sought to determine
what date to the Gregorian calendar year corresponded I Kanishka, a time seen as
a kind of turning point in Indian history, it 's is probably not, and the
beginning of an era in which dated many dedications engraved on the base of
statues. Fixing the beginning of this era would have allowed, people would be
fixed on a solid foundation chronology of Indian art and religious forms of new
born or at least appear in broad daylight at the time kouchane: Buddhism Greater
Vehicle, appearance of the image of Buddha, new types of Hindu devotion.
The Yue-zhi, nomadic tribes
At the beginning of the second century BC, a group of nomadic tribes with
several tens of thousands of riders and experienced by sources in China under
the name Yue-zhi or Yuëh-chih, without doubt the corresponding Asiens, Pasiens,
Tokhares and Sacaraules sources Greco-Roman, invaded from the east, Sogdiane or
region of Samarkand, and Bactrian, or - the valley of the Oxus, now divided
between southern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan North -- which the
Greeks already possessed more full control. Installed until the year 100 on the
right bank - Northeast - the Oxus, then they settled in Bactria south - in the
current provinces of northern Afghanistan - and then push towards Kabul and
India North-West. It is not clear to them that what they say Chinese texts and
analysis of currencies and inscriptions of their descendants. They speak an
Iranian language, now called the Bactrian, which we do not know if they have
adopted once arrived in Bactria, perhaps because the language they spoke before
was already a very speak Iranian close to the Bactrian. If we judge by the
monetary portraits, their faces were not Mongolian type: the sovereign nose is
big, their eyes are not clamped.
Birth of the dynasty kouchane
The Yue-zhi Bactrian were divided into five groups, each headed by a chief or
yabgu. Kushan is the name of one of these yabgu, perhaps installed, around 100
BC, in the region of Termez (southern Uzbekistan): Some archaeologists
Russian-Uzbek attribute to this yabgu and its descendants buildings Khalchayan
and Dalverzin-Tepe where excavations have unearthed buildings, sculptures and
objects unfortunately anonymous, but who could have belonged. We do not know if
"Kushan" is a personal, family, clan or tribe, but all sovereign kouchans we
know the name did systematically monitor it on the epithet "kouchan" on their
currencies and often their markings. One of these yabgu appointed Heroes or
Miaos by reading that one makes its monetary legends in Greek characters badly
burned, defeated currency in his name around the middle of the first century BC.
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History 
