Earth's climate is undergoing profound changes. Understanding and assessing these changes requires insight from the past. The period since 1700 is of particular relevance because Earth's climate underwent a transition from the Little Ice Age climate to the era of anthropogenic global warming. Moreover, pronounced climatic excursions occurred on interannual and decadal time scales, and atmospheric composition changed. Recent developments in the fields of paleoclimatology and historical climatology - high-resolution climate proxies, climate model simulations, and numerical techniques such as data assimilation - allow a much more detailed analysis of climatic changes of the past centuries than possible only a decade ago. "Climatic Changes since 1700" - the title honours the 1890 book by the same title of geographer Eduard Brückner - covers data and methods used to study climate of the past centuries, summarises the mechanisms behind interannual to multidecadal climate variability and provides an overview of global climate history since 1700 based on new data sets and model simulations.

Zusammenfassung
The proposed book is not only a tribute to the work of Brückner (and indeed also a personal tribute, since Brückner wrote his book at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern), but references to Brückner's book are also a conceptual tool in the proposed book, though used sparingly and thoughtfully. Apart from providing historical context, references may facilitate introducing some complex topics, for instance by first presenting Brückner's view and then complementing the picture with today's understanding. References can be used for contrast: Comparing Brückner's methods and data with today's research concepts makes the progress in the field easily understandable. The enormous growth of information since Brükner's time allows a much more detailed perspective on some scientific problems. Or references can be used to highlight similarity. Some aspects have not changed over time. Finally, the book complements Brückner's studies by adding the arguably most interesting and certainly most relevant period, the past 120 years.

Inhalt

Introduction.- 2. The Basis: Past Climate Observations and Methods.- 3. The Machinery: Mechanisms behind Climate Changes.- 4. Climate Changes since 1700.- 5. Conclusions.- References.