This handbook offers the first comprehensive, state-of-the-field guide to past weather and climate and their role in human societies. Bringing together dozens of international specialists from the sciences and humanities, this volume describes the methods, sources, and major findings of historical climate reconstruction and impact research. Its chapters take the reader through each key source of past climate and weather information and each technique of analysis; through each historical period and region of the world; through the major topics of climate and history and core case studies; and finally through the history of climate ideas and science. Using clear, non-technical language, The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History serves as a textbook for students, a reference guide for specialists and an introduction to climate history for scholars and interested readers.

Sam White is Associate Professor of Environmental History at the Ohio State University, USA and author of the award-winning book The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (2011), among other publications. He is also co-founder and director of the Climate History Network. Christian Pfister is Professor Emeritus and Senior Researcher at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He has published 11 books and more than 200 articles. He is co-founder of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH). Franz Mauelshagen is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. He has published several books, including the award-winning Wunderkammer auf Papier (A Cabinet of Curiosities on Paper, 2011), and more than 50 articles on the history of science, disasters, climate, and the Anthropocene.