Volcanoes, Climate and History

Ulf Büntgen

Cambridge University, UK

Ulf Büntgen is Professor of Environmental Systems Analysis at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. His main research interest and expertise are in the reconstruction of climate and environmental change at different spatiotemporal scales, with emphasis on linking natural data with historical evidence.

Nicola di Cosmo

Princeton, USA

Nicola Di Cosmo is Henry Luce Foundation Professor of East Asian History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. His main research interest and expertise are in the relations between China and inner Eurasia from prehistory to the modern period, with emphasis on using natural proxy data in the study of the Mongol empire and the Qing dynasty.

Jan Esper

Mainz, GER

Jan Esper is Professor of Physical Geography and Climatology at the Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. His main research interest and expertise are in dendrochronology and high-resolution paleoclimatology, with emphasis on the development of multimillennial-long ring width and wood density chronologies from the upper and northern treelines.

Michael Frachetti

St. Louis, USA

FMichael Frachetti is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the ecology and social strategies of ancient nomadic societies of Central and Eastern Eurasia. He is the author of Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia (UCPress, 2008). He currently conducts fieldwork in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Anna Guðjónsdóttir

Hamburg, GER

Anna Guðjónsdóttir is an Icelandic artist based in Hamburg. Her main research interest and area of expertise is in painting and site-specific art, transforming an environment into a certain experience based on human understanding of landscape, nature and cultural history. She uses painting and the exhibition space itself as a medium. Her main fieldwork has been concentrated on accessible areas on the mid-Atlantic ridge in Iceland.

Lamiya Khalidi

Nice, FRA

Lamya Khalidi is a Researcher at CNRS and the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France. Her main research interest and expertise are in environmental archaeology, with emphasis on the dynamical processes of human transformation and adaptation in response to volcanism in East Africa and the Middle East during different periods of the Holocene.

Franz Mauelshagen

Bielefeld, GER

Franz Mauelshagen is a Senior Lecturer at Bielefeld University, Germany. His main research interest and expertise are in environmental history, with a strong expertise in historical climate research, disaster history and the Anthropocene. His work seeks to place examples of human-climate interactions of the Anthropocene in a longer-term context of modern history in, both, the "Old" and "New Worlds".

Clive Oppenheimer12https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/oppenheimer/

Cambridge, UK

Clive Oppenheimer is Professor of Volcanology at the University of Cambridge, UK. His main research expertise is in volcanic processes and hazards, with emphasis on the long-range climatic and societal impacts of eruptions. He has participated in 14 missions to Antarctica, and made two documentary features with Werner Herzog: Into the Inferno, and Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds.

Eleonora Rohland

Bielefeld, GER

Eleonora Rohland is Professor for Entangled History in the Americas and Director of the Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her main research interest and expertise are in the environmental and climate histories of North America and the Caribbean, with emphasis on the history of knowledge and technology, as well as economic, insurance and disaster history.

• Comment: Büntgen U (2024) The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism. npj Climate Action 3: 36.

• Büntgen U, Oppenheimer C, Li P, Frachetti M, Esper J, Torbenson M, Krusic PJ (2023) Drought as a trigger of the rapid rise of professional skateboarding in 1970s southern California. PNAS Nexus 2: 1-4.
• Frachetti M, di Cosmo N, Esper J, Khalidi L, Mauelshagen F, Oppenheimer C, Rohland E, Büntgen U (2023), The Dhaliagram: A new tool for interdisciplinary investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction, in: Science Advances 9.
• Hakenbeck S, Büntgen U (2022) The role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. Journal of Roman Archaeology.
• Büntgen U, Crivellaro A, Arseneault D, Baillie M, Barclay D, Bernabei M, Bontadi J, Boswijk G, Brown D, Christie DA, Churakova (Sidorova) OV, Cook E, D’Arrigo R, Davi N, Esper J, Fonti P, Greaves C, Hantemirov RM, Hughes MK,Kirdyanov AV, Krusic PJ, Le Quesne C, Ljungqvist FC, Myglan VS, Nicolussi K, Oppenheimer C, Palmer J, Qin C, Reinig F, Salzer M, Stoffel M, Torbenson M, Villalba R, Wiesenberg N, Wiles G, Yang B, Piermattei A (2022) Global wood anatomical perspective on the onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) in the mid-6th century CE. Science Bulletin 67: 2336-2344.
• Büntgen U, Esper, J, Oppenheimer, C. (2022) In praise of archives (and an open mind), Communications: Earth & Environment, 3: 84.
• Büntgen U, Hodgson Smith, S, Wagner, S, Krusic, P, Esper, J, Piermattei, A, Crivellaro, A, Reinig, F, Tegel, W, Kirdyanov, A, Trnka, M, Oppenheimer, C (2022) Global tree‑ring response and inferred climate variation following the mid‑thirteenth century Samalas eruption. Climate Dynamics  59: 531-546.
• Büntgen U (2021) Warum die Klimatologie Vulkane untersuchen sollte. Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 74: 500-503.
• Büntgen U, Allen K, Anchukaitis K, Arseneault D, Boucher É, Bräuning A, Chatterjee S, Cherubini C, Churakova (Sidorova) O, Corona C, Gennaretti F, Grießinger J, Guillet S, Guiot J, Gunnarson B, Helama S, Hochreuther P, Hughes MK, Huybers P, Kirdyanov AV, Krusic PJ, Ludescher J, Meier WJ-H, Myglan VS, Nicolussi K, Oppenheimer C, Reinig F, Salzer MW, Seftigen K, Stine AR, Stoffel M, St. George S, Tejedor E, Trevino A, Trouet V, Wang J, Wilson R, Yang B, Xu G, Esper J (2021) The influence of decision-making in tree ring-based climate reconstructions. Nature Communications 12: 3411. 
• Büntgen U, Urban O, Krusic PJ, Rybníček M, Kolář T, Kyncl T, Ač A, Koňasová E, Čáslavsky J, Esper J, Wagner S, Saurer M, Tegel W, Dobrovonly P, Cherubini P, Reinig F, Trnka M (2021) Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability. Nature Geoscience 14: 190-196.
• Di Cosmo N, Wagner S, Büntgen U (2021) Climate and environmental context of the Mongol invasion of Syria and defeat at ‘Ayn Jālūt (1258–60 CE). Erdkunde 75: 87-104.
• Reinig F, Wacker L, Jöris O, Oppenheimer C, Guidobaldi G, Nievergelt D, Adolph F, Cherubini P, Engels S, Esper J, Land A, Lane C, Pfanz H, Remmele S, Sigl M, Sookdeo A, Büntgen U (2021) Precise date for the Laacher See eruption synchronizes the Younger Dryas. Nature 595: 66-69.