Climate and human, animal and crop diseases — an example: The Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and some lessons for today

This contribution springs from a research study carried out by the author and Dr A. Bourke, formerly Director of the Irish Meteorological Service and sometime President of the World Meteorological Organization's Commission for Agricultural Meteorology, of the Irish potato famine in the last century and possible lessons to be learnt from it for the modern world. The research was carried out for the Commission of the European Communities between 1982 and 1984.