Extraction of Climate Information from Chinese Historical Writings

EXTRACTION OF CLIMATE INFORMATION FROM CHINESE HISTORICAL WRITINGS* Zhang Peiyuan This paper documents methods of extracting data on climate—specifically temperature and precipitation—from Chinese historical records. Relevant sources include local gazetteers, official histories, memorials to the emperor, and personal and private writings. Together they make it possible to collate information on precipitation and temperature over much of the empire for a period of up to five hundred years. China's voluminous historical writings have frequently been studied by philosophers and social science scholars. However, the application of historical data to natural science research is rare. Zhu Kezhen1 was the first to use climate data from historical sources to document the history of temperature fluctuations during the last five thousand years in China. His work opened the new and promising field of Chinese historical climatology. Research has continued in recent years at the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.2 It is now possible to establish a new climate series based on more complete historical investigation. The new series is being based upon the following kinds of sources, using methods which will be described below. Local Gazetteers The historical depth and geographical range of Chinese local gazetteers are unique. Beijing library has 8200 editions of provincial, prefectural and countylevel gazetteers, most from the Ming-Qing dynasties. Local gazetteers are most authoritative for events which occurred at, or not long before, the date of compilation. However, the credibility of reports of events which occurred long before the date of compilation is much lower. Although most gazetteers were compiled by government officials or other locally-prominent scholars, some people made a living by compiling gazetteers. These men could be "This essay summarizes an unpublished paper written with Drs. W. C. Wang and S. Hameed of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. 1ZhU 1972. 2Zhang et al. 1979; Gong et al. 1983. Late Imperiai China Voi. 14, No. 2 (December 1993): 96-106 96 Extraction of Climate Information from Chinese Historical Writings97 hired to compile several gazetteers for different localities in succession, and the quality of their work could be poor. Climate information in local gazetteers was usually recorded in the section on omens and anomalies (Wu xing zhi). On occasion such information may also be found in sections on economic and social conditions, where floods, droughts, severe wind or cold caused damage affecting property, local waterways , agriculture or politics. For example, the Kai hua xianzhi (1634) recorded: "Eighteenth year of Jia Jing (1539): heavy rain fell frequently from mid-April to June 20. It caused extensive flooding. The depth of water was more than ten feet. Drought occurred that autumn." The same gazetteer reported: "Thirty-ninth year of Jia Jing (1560): heavy snow fell from mid-December to mid-January. Large trees were damaged. Many people died from famine. More snow fell next February. Famine continued." Using local gazetteers as a foundation, and supplementing their data with material from other historical sources, the State Meteorological Administration of China has recently published an annual chart of dryness/wetness in China for the last 500-year period (SMA 1981). The Ming dynasty portion of this record can be improved by consulting rare books recently republished ( Tianyi ge) , and local gazetteers held outside China in the Library of Congress3 and the Harvard-Yenching Library.4 Official Dynastic Histories The section on omens and anomalies ( Wu xing zhi) of a dynastic history will carry some reports on natural disasters. Unfortunately, often such reports, based on the archives of the previous dynasty, will omit essential details. For example: "In the autumn of the Seventh year of the Emperor Yang Di (A.D. 611) more than thirty counties in Shandong and Henan were flooded." Here the location and exact date of the disaster is unclear. In other cases, definitions of what constitutes a "disaster" vary and are subjective. However, other sections of dynastic histories sometimes offer direct indications of climate changes. For example, in June 1717 the Kangxi emperor was recorded as saying that the recent winter temperatures in Heilongjiang province were warmer than had been the case since 1571, and that since 1646 snow had fallen frequently in winter in Fujian

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art history · Beijing · China · Climate change · Credibility · Emperor · Empire · Geography · Historical geography · Historical record · Human geography · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Tian · Climate variability and models · History · Law · Tree-ring climate responses

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