Personal documents, narrative sources, archival materials, and early instrumental observations play a vital role in reconstructing past climates and their historical consequences. However, evaluation of these “archives of societies” and their climate and weather information requires specialized training in local languages and history. The special issue aims to promote communication among researchers in historical climatology in different world regions by clarifying and comparing approaches. To this end, we invite global reviews and analyses of methods, sources, and results in historical climatology, as well as original research in regional and national historical climatology that explains its sources and methods for an international audience. We especially encourage contributions that facilitate international comparisons in different areas of historical climatology research, including (1) different national or regional source materials, such as the types of records available, their recording style, their temporal and spatial distribution, and the philosophical or cultural elements essential to their interpretation; (2) different methods of quantification and of calibration and verification of data in the archives of societies for the reconstruction of climate parameters, including the use of ice- and plant-phenological proxies and the indexing of qualitative descriptions; (3) the reporting of extreme weather and natural disasters in different national or regional contexts, including literary elements and political and religious biases in historical descriptions; and (4) methods of attributing societal impacts to climate variability in different national or regional contexts, including the availability and use of historical harvest, price, wage, and migration data. The broader goals of this SI include further collaboration among international researchers in historical climatology; dissemination of best practices in historical climatology; foundations for transcontinental climate reconstructions that incorporate the archives of societies; and more accurate cross-cultural comparative analyses of climate and weather impacts, adaptation, and resilience during past centuries.

This special issue is a product of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies (CRIAS) working group.