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Issued in 13 CE, Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto 1–3 is the last collection of Augustan poetry. Augustus died in 14, and a fourth book appeared later, probably after Ovid's death in 17. In 8 CE the poet, having incurred the lasting wrath of the princeps, had been exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea for reasons that remain unclear. By his own account there were two charges, carmen et error (Tr. 2.207). The latter he does not want discussed, telling correspondents not to ask about it (see 1.6.23–6 and the headnote to that poem), and he directs attention instead to the carmen, the Ars amatoria, which he often condemns as if it solely wrought his ruin. In exile he continued to write, issuing two collections of elegiac poems in which he laments his fate and begs for help in mitigating it. The earlier collection, the Tristia, is partly epistolary, the Epistulae ex Ponto entirely so. The latter collection is in a sense a continuation of the Tristia – rebus idem, titulo differt, he remarks in the opening poem (Ex P. 1.1.17): this work, ‘the same in subject matter, differs in title’. The last book of the Tristia contains more verse-epistles than the four earlier books and consequently signals a transition between the preceding four books and the Epistulae ex Ponto. In the Tristia, however, Ovid does not name his addressees, fearing that his verse may harm them by calling attention to their association with the disgraced and exiled poet. Now he not only names his addressees but turns their identification to an artistic purpose: he arranges the poems of Ex P. 1–3 by addressee. At the end of the collection he claims that he ‘collected and joined’ the letters ‘together somehow, without order’, collectas utcumque sine ordine iunxi (3.9.53). They may not seem so random to the reader, but their putative disorder serves a symbolic function, meant to illustrate the principle that ‘my muse is too true an index of my woes’, Musa mea est index nimium quoque uera malorum (3.9.49). In fact it is clear that he selects the addressees for each book with an eye to variety, and his careful arrangement of letters in a largely symmetrical pattern allows most addressees to recur, some several times in the course of the three books.
From the 1910s to World War II natural-science Psychology expanded its scope internationally, while in the USA it also became a prominent social force in its practical applications. In this chapter, we discuss the discipline’s social context and institutional development during this period. Then we review the major schools of thought and scientific developments in basic psychological, developmental, and interpersonal processes. Next we consider psychologists’ relationship to the social order. We conclude with themes that capture the intellectual development of natural-science Psychology in the post-World War I era.
The aims of Chapter 6 are to describe:
The social context, including socioeconomic conditions and scientific developments, which facilitated Psychology’s expansion after World War I.
Developments in Psychology internationally during this period.
The principal schools of thought between the wars: Gestalt theory, field theory, higher nervous activity, and neobehaviourism.
The major contributions in basic psychological processes, including brain mechanisms and learning, memory, and language.
The emergence of developmental psychology internationally.
The major developments in the interpersonal areas of Psychology.
Psychologists’ relationship to the social order, including collaboration with the state and responses to the Depression, sexism, and racism.
The central themes that summarize Psychology’s development between the wars: narrow purview, biological reductionism, disciplinary fragmentation, and alliance with the political and socioeconomic status quo.
In Chapters 2 and 3 we considered the philosophical and scientific ideas of previous centuries that laid the intellectual foundations for Psychology. Now we discuss the immediate roots of Psychology’s inception in nineteenth-century philosophy and the natural sciences. But first we address the fractious state of society during this era. Due to the manifold developments occurring within and outside what are called Western nations (i.e., Europe, Russia, Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand), such a characterization remains fragmented itself.
Anglo-American and European culture was in turmoil economically, politically, and socially due to the Industrial Revolution, political strife, and social movements for the emancipation of workers, women, and slaves. Privileged nations cemented their roles as colonial and imperial powers during this time. Upheavals of thought, such as the Romantic movement, paralleled these developments. Yet the preponderant intellectual orientation remained the rule of reason and experience informed by scientific knowledge.
Ovid opens and closes the three-book collection with a letter to Brutus, to whom Ex P. 4.6 is also addressed; little is known of him (see Syme 1978: 80). Because O. appears to entrust the collection to him (see 3.9.51–6), he may have served as the poet's literary agent in Rome. To be sure, O. addresses not only Brutus but readers of the whole collection, to which this elegy serves as an introduction. In a sense, the Epistulae ex Ponto are a continuation of the Tristia: rebus idem, titulo differt (17), we are told; yet this collection of letters also recalls O.'s earlier collection of Epistulae Heroidum. Like his abandoned heroines of legend, O. earnestly importunes his addressees. He does not conceal their names as in the Tristia; now he calls attention to their unwillingness to be named (19–20), despite the embarrassment or even danger that may attach to association with the exiled and disgraced poet.
The elegy falls into three parts. In the first (1–36), the poet begs acceptance in Rome for his poetry-book. In the second (37–58), he presents begging priests of Isis, the Magna Mater and Diana as images of his own lot, continuing to plead for acceptance of the collection while making a transition to the third part (59–80), in which he expresses deep regret for his culpa and hopes for mitigation of his exile by a change of place.
We begin by defining climate and weather and then explaining their significance in everyday life. This helps clarify the scope and importance of climatology and its place in environmental sciences. Following a brief introduction to climatic data and frequently used statistics, we review the history of world climatology over the last two centuries. Finally, we examine the contribution of weather satellites to the study of weather and climate beginning in the 1960s.
Climate and weather
The word climate is derived from the Greek word “klima,” meaning slope, and was linked to temperature gradients from Equator to Pole. It entered the English language from French in the thirteenth century. Its modern meaning evolved in the sixteenth century.
Climate is the sum total (or composite) of the weather conditions that generally prevail at a place or over a region. It encompasses the statistics (means, variability, and extremes) of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind velocity, cloud cover, precipitation, and other meteorological variables over a long period of time. In contrast, weather is the condition of these same elements and their variations over time intervals of a few days. Conventionally, weather extends out to about 10–15 days – the limit of numerical weather prediction – while longer intervals, typically a month, are considered as part of climate. The “standard” interval used to define climatic characteristics by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is 30 years, and these data are called “normals.” This term was first used for 1901–1930; the current normal is 1961–1990 or 1981–2010, depending on data availability. However, world weather records were earlier published for 1881–1920. The 30 years must be consecutive and the averages are unweighted. The normals are updated by national climate organizations and the WMO each decade
As we noted in the last chapter, the last 30 years have seen significant global warming, with nearly universal retreat of mountain glaciers, and major losses of Arctic sea ice cover in the 2000s, especially in late summer. Ice shelves have collapsed off northern Ellesmere Island, Canada, and in the Antarctic Peninsula. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, concluding that increased concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) was almost certainly the cause. The report also projected global climatic conditions by AD 2100 using the results of simulations with coupled global climate models.
We begin with a brief review of global climate models, and then consider the major projected changes during this century, their impacts, and finally related economic and socio-political issues.
Global climate models
A large number of model projections of GHG concentrations in AD 2100 have been made using different scenarios of population growth and economic activity, These scenarios have been applied in global climate models since the third IPCC report in 2001. Global climate models are coupled atmosphere and ocean general circulation models (GCMs) that treat mathematically almost all climatic processes at high temporal and spatial resolutions.
The elements of climate involve external forcing factors – notably solar radiation – response functions such as air temperature, and moisture variables like precipitation and moisture content. It is not possible to follow a totally logical sequence due to the interactions between many of the variables. Nevertheless, we shall begin with solar energy and other forms of energy, then temperature, and proceed from there to moisture variables such as clouds, precipitation, and evaporation.
Weather variables are measured at a global network of about 7000 stations every six hours and these data are collected and analyzed to produce climatic statistics for hourly, daily, monthly, and annual intervals. These and other historical data are available at: www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/climatedata.html
Climatic variables such as solar radiation are recorded by much more limited specialized networks.
Energy
Solar radiation
The energy that warms the Earth and its atmosphere, thereby supporting life, and also drives the atmospheric circulation, is supplied by solar radiation. The sun emits electromagnetic energy from its photosphere (the lowest layer of the solar atmosphere, effectively the visible solar surface), which has a temperature of about 6000 °C. Solar energy is emitted at a rate proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature, meaning that the sun emits enormous quantities of energy. The short wavelength of this radiation is in the range 0.1–3 μm, or micrometers (μ = 10−6, this Greek letter is pronounced “mew”) with a maximum in the visible light band at 0.5 μm(see Box 2A.1). Ultraviolet radiation is shorter than 0.4 μm, andmost of this is absorbed by atmospheric ozone (O3) gas between 10 and 50 km in the upper atmosphere (see Box 2B.1). Visible radiation (light) is emitted between 0.4 μm (blue light) and 0.8 μm (red light) (see Box 2B.2), and infrared (or thermal) radiation between 0.8 and 3 μm. The amount received at the top of the atmosphere (ToA) on a surface at right angles to the beam is ~1366 W m−2.
This textbook seeks to provide a modern global overview of the world’s climates on all space and time scales. It addresses microclimates to global scale processes and phenomena. It spans climate changes over geologic time and the future climates of the late twenty-first century. It is designed to serve as an introductory course in climatology, suitable for students in environmental sciences, geography, meteorology, and related disciplines. The purpose of the book is first to provide a firm foundation of the physical principles that underpin climatology; second, to describe the spatial climatic characteristics over the globe including local and microclimatic scales; third, to detail the past and projected future climates of the Earth; and fourth, to introduce some applications of climatic information.
The book is organized into 11 parts following a brief introduction on definitions, statistics, and the history of climatology. These are: a global view of the major climatic elements of energy and moisture followed by pressure, wind and storms, local and microclimates, the general circulation, circulation modes, synoptic climatology, the regional effects of land and sea, climatic types on land, past climates, future climate and its impacts, and different examples of applied climatology. Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 are more meteorological in content. Chapters 8 and 9 provide detailed accounts of oceanic and land climates.
Although geologists recognized the occurrence of past ice ages in the 1840s, the study of climate change only began in earnest in the 1950–1960s. Since the 1980s there have been major advances in our understanding of the nature of, and reasons for, climatic changes. These advances have been made possible through the development of new observational tools and hypotheses, and the use of global climate models to simulate past climatic conditions.
Knowledge of the climate of the past is of vital importance for a full understanding of present and potential future world climates. Analysis of past changes can help to reveal the underlying causes of global climate patterns. In this chapter we will summarize our knowledge of geologic time, the Cenozoic era, the Quaternary period, and the Anthropocene, when human influences on the environment became significant.
It is worth pointing out that climate variability refers to the variation of global or regional climate about its mean state. The time scale may be decades or millennia and the variation may be cyclical or irregular. Climate change refers to changes in the long-term statistics of climatic elements (the mean state, standard deviation, or frequency distribution). The time scale is at least several decades, but may be thousands of years or more. Climatic changes may be due to changes in external forcings (solar output, changes in the Earth’s orbit, volcanic eruptions), internal variability in the atmosphere–ocean–cryosphere system), or anthropogenic (human-induced) forcing. Changes may involve an abrupt shift in the mean state, an increasing or decreasing trend over time, or a change in the degree of variation about the mean without a change in the mean value.
In this chapter we examine various examples of the application of climatic information. We begin by examining climatic extremes and disasters. Then we examine climate and soils, and climate and agriculture. This is followed by a consideration of water resources, renewable energy, and climate and transportation. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of insurance and climate-related disasters and a section on climate forecasts and services.
Climatic extremes and disasters
Much attention has been given to weather extremes – severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, windstorms and tropical cyclones. These events typically last from a few hours to a few days. However, climatic extremes have time scales from a month to decades, with long-lasting consequences. They include persistent intense rains giving rise to floods, protracted droughts, heat waves, and freezes.
For the United States a Climate Extremes Index (CEI) has been developed by NOAA, which is based on an aggregate set of conventional climate extreme indicators. These include the following types of data:
monthly maximum and minimum temperature;
daily precipitation;
monthly Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI);
the wind velocity in land-falling tropical storm and hurricanes.
Temperature and precipitation data are taken from 1220 stations in the US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) covering the contiguous United States. The values are based on the percentage of the area of the United States with much below/much above normal maximum and minimum temperatures and, similarly, of severe drought or extreme moisture surplus. The details may be found at www. ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei
Between 1910 and 2011 the CEI ranged from 9 to 40. It was lowest over 1942– 1980 and has subsequently been consistently higher.