Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability, in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, political, or socio-cultural resilience, which deserves as much attention as the identification of stressors. Response to environmental crises of the last millennium varied greatly according to place and time but drew from traditional knowledge to evaluate new information or experiment with increasing flexibility, even if modernization or intensification were decentralized and protracted. Longer-term diachronic experience offers insight into how societies have dealt with acute stress, a more instructive perspective for the future than is offered by apocalyptic scenarios.complexity | social-ecological resilience | multicausality Current Visions of Collapse

Analyses of historical patterns of rainfall variability are essential for understanding long-term changes in precipitation timing and distribution. Focussing on former Natal and Zululand (now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), this study presents the first combined annual and seasonal reconstruction of rainfall variability over southeast Africa for the 19th century. Analyses of documentary sources, including newspapers and colonial and missionary materials, indicate that the region was affected by severe or multi-year drought on eight occasions between 1836 and 1900 (the rainy seasons of 1836-38, 1861-63, 1865-66, 1868-70, 1876-79, 1883-85, 1886-90 and 1895-1900). Six severe or multi-year wet periods are also identified (1847-49, 1854-57, 1863-65, 1879-81, 1890-91 and 1892-94). The timing of these events agrees well with independent reconstructions of 19th century rainfall for other parts of the southern African summer rainfall zone (SRZ), suggesting subcontinental scale variability. Our results indicate that the relationship between El Niño and rainfall in southeast Africa was relatively stable, at least for the latter half of the 19th century. El Niño conditions appear to have had a more consistent modulating effect upon rainfall during the 19th century than La Niña. The rainfall chronology from this study is combined with other annually-resolved palaeoclimate records from mainland southern Africa and surrounding oceans as part of a multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction for the SRZ. This reconstruction confirms (i) the long-term importance of ENSO and Indian Ocean SSTs for modulating regional rainfall; and (ii) that summer precipitation has been declining progressively over the last 200 years

Unpublished materials written by missionaries based at London Missionary Society and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society mission stations across the Kalahari region have been used as the primary source for the construction of a historical climatic chronology for central southern Africa for the period 1815-1900. Data from these unpublished documents were supplemented by analyses of published material written by various hunters and explorers (as well as missionaries) who travelled beyond the immediate areas of missionary activity. Key features of the climate chronology are the identification of six drought episodes and seven periods of above-average rainfall which affected various parts of the region. Major dry periods occurred in 1820-27, 1831-35, 1844-51, 1857-65, 1877-86 and 1894-99, of which the droughts in 1844-51, 1857-65, 1884-86 and 1894-99 were the most widespread. Wetter periods are identified in 1816-17, 1829-30, 1851-52, 1863-64, 1874-75, 1889-91 and 1899-1900, with the most widely distributed wet conditions occurring in 1889-91. In order to ascertain the reliability of the chronology, the document-derived climate sequence has been compared with available meteorological data for the study area (from Barkly West for the period 1883-1900) and shows good general agreement.The results of this study have been compared with historical climate chronologies for the former Cape Province of South Africa. This comparison reveals that large areas of the southern African subcontinent experienced dry conditions in 1826-27, 1832-35, 1848-1851, 1858-60, 1861-63, 1877-81, 1884-86 and 1894-99, with the dry phases of the early 1850s, 1858-60, 1861-63 and 1894-99 possibly extending beyond the northern border of present-day Botswana. Wetter phases affected much of the subcontinent in 1829-30, 1851-52, 1863-64, 1874-75, 1889-91 and 1899-1900, with 1874-75 and 1889-91 associated with reports of flooding from central Botswana to the eastern Cape. The causal mechanisms of patterns of climatic variability are unclear, but 19th century drought periods in the Kalahari show a close coincidence with the timing of moderate to strong El Niño-southern oscillation events

This study presents the first consolidation of palaeoclimate proxy records from multiple archives to develop statistical rainfall reconstructions for southern Africa covering the last two centuries. State-of-the-art ensemble reconstructions reveal multi-decadal rainfall variability in the summer and winter rainfall zones. A decrease in precipitation amount over time is identified in the summer rainfall zone. No significant change in precipitation amount occurred in the winter rainfall zone, but rainfall variability has increased over time. Generally synchronous rainfall fluctuations between the two zones are identified on decadal scales, with common wet (dry) periods reconstructed around 1890 (1930). A strong relationship between seasonal rainfall and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the surrounding oceans is confirmed. Coherence among decadal-scale fluctuations of southern African rainfall, regional SST, SSTs in the Pacific Ocean and rainfall in south-eastern Australia suggest SST-rainfall teleconnections across the Southern Hemisphere. Temporal breakdowns of the SST-rainfall relationship in the southern African regions and the connection between the two rainfall zones are observed, for example during the 1950s. Our results confirm the complex interplay between large-scale teleconnections, regional SSTs and local effects in modulating multi-decadal southern African rainfall variability over long timescales

Climate change has become a key environmental narrative of the 21st century. However, emphasis on the science of climate change has overshadowed studies focusing on human interpretations of climate history, of adaptation and resilience, and of explorations of the institutions and cultural coping strategies that may have helped people adapt to climate changes in the past. Moreover, although the idea of climate change has been subject to considerable scrutiny by the physical sciences, recent climate scholarship has highlighted the need for a re examination of the cultural and spatial dimensions of climate, with contributions from the humanities and social sciences. Establishing a multidisciplinary dialogue and approach to climate research past, present, and future has arguably never been more important. This article outlines developments in historical climatology research and considers examples of integrated multidisciplinary approaches to climate, climatic variability, and climate change research, conducted across the physical sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We highlight the international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative as one example of such an integrated approach. Initially, ACRE began as a response from climate science to the needs of the agricultural sector in Queensland, Australia for a longer, more spatially, and temporally-complete database of the weather. ACRE has now evolved to embrace an international group of researchers working together across disciplines to integrate their efforts into a four-dimensional (4D) dynamical global historical climate-quality reanalysis (reconstruction). WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:164–174. doi:10.1002/wcc.37