ABSTRACT
Analogies provide an approach to understanding the potentialities of complex events that are difficult to fully capture in formal analyses or models. Analogs for climate change impacts and adaptation have great utility. Given the uncertainties in projections of future climate and the changing human context in which climate change impacts will be experienced, thinking by analogy provides one useful way to explore the dimensions of such change. Prognostication of future climate change and human adaptation is fraught with difficulty. General circulation models of climate change are themselves uncertain and divergent. General circulation models of climate change are themselves uncertain and divergent. Historical climate analogs have widespread use and play an important role in understanding global warming and its regional impacts. W. B. Meyer and colleagues cited examples from urban climate, collapse of ancient civilizations, climate crises in medieval Europe, arctic subsistence, Great Plains agriculture, Brazilian drought, and South Asian and African climate variability as examples of climate vulnerability.
