How long and how strong must a climatic anomaly be in order to evoke a social transformation? Historical and contemporaneous case studies

Tal Ulus,Ronnie Ellenblum

doi:10.1057/s41599-021-00933-4

Tal Ulus, Ronnie Ellenblum

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00933-4

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Abstract

In recent years, scholarly interest in the nexus between climate change and human societies has risen dramatically, and many researchers from different disciplines have begun studying the possible effects of climate change and climate anomalies on past and present societies. In this article, we join this lively debate, seeking to extend it by raising, and providing possible answers to, two fundamental questions: what type of climatic anomalies can undermine social stability? What duration and intensity are necessary to instigate structural change? When attempting to answer these questions, researchers tend to view short-term climatic events, such as storms or mudslides, as “unusual” events that instigate an “unusual” reality for temporary, and measurable, time periods. We argue, instead, that gradual and more “usual” climatic events, such as prolonged droughts or extended periods of untimely rains, impact societies in a more profound and “extraordinary” manner, and it is here that our paper meets the theme of the extraordinary and the usual, the axes of the current collection of essays. Based on qualitative examination of collapse periods in western Asia and northern China during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and a high-resolution re-examination of the crisis in Mali at the beginning of 2010, we argue that extended climate anomalies that cause decreases in the amount of available food are the anomalies that most affect the fate of human civilizations. While people can cope with short-term climate anomalies that cause periodical food crises, lasting a year or two, extended climate anomalies that affect the availability of food, like droughts, cold spells or untimely rains, can have disastrous, long-term effects: they accelerate decisive processes, push people to migrate outside their regions of residence, increase violence and religious extremism, and, ultimately, lead to structural changes in the societies that are affected by the crises.

Highlights

The growing preoccupation with the future implications of global warming has increased the academic and public interest in the possibility that climate changes can affect the fate of human societies
In order to do so, we begin by asking: What climate anomalies can hinder the stabilization of human societies? What is the level of change and duration necessary in order to affect human beings? In other words, what type of climatic anomalies can undermine social stability? What ought to be their duration and intensity in order to instigate structural change? While researchers tend to view short-term climatic events, such as earthquakes or mudslides, as “unusual” events that instigate an “unusual” reality for temporary, and measurable, time periods, we argue, instead, that gradual and more “usual” climatic events, such as prolonged droughts or prolonged periods of untimely rains, impact societies in a more profound and “extraordinary”
This study revealed an unusual concentration of well-documented climatic anomalies, including extended droughts but especially strong cold spells, associated with the global climatic event known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) (Li et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

The growing preoccupation with the future implications of global warming has increased the academic and public interest in the possibility that climate changes can affect the fate of human societies. The effect of food crises or a pandemic on nutritional security; the awareness of fragility; the level of violence; the degree of influence of extreme religious groups; the willingness to carry out violent political coups; and the desire or need to emigrate from one’s home: all should be examined in a time-span that is relevant to a human life span, ranging between less than a year to a decade or two This is a very short duration in historical terms, one which is very difficult to follow in the experimental proxy data of past climatic events, whose margin of error for measurements is, in most cases, greater than one or two decades. Propose that a timeframe for addressing our research question ranges from several years to a decade

Discussion

Conclusion