Applied climatology for heritage

Abstract

The protection of heritage from a changing climate has been of increasing interest over the last few decades, which creates a need for a systematic approach to the impacts of climate on tangible and intangible heritage. We present heritage climatology as an applied, interdisciplinary field of science that examines aspects of climate that affect heritage and provides data, statistics, well-tuned climate parameters and projections that can aid interpreting past changes and future management of heritage. It must consider the impact of extreme events, cyclic processes and the gradual accumulation of damage. Climate threats to heritage need to be represented at the appropriate temporal and spatial scales, and transferred using dose–response functions such that they can be interpreted in terms of management decisions yet be resistant to errors from both the representation of the climate threat and its translation into policy.