We're hoping to make a kind of publicly accessible database of memories of extreme weather events,
so people can sort of tap into things that have happened in their community. So local
weather could be something they can be part of. And I think this is something that's much
more meaningful to, to people at the community level than, than big questions about climate
change. Because climate change, ultimately, if you know, when it's happening, is manifested
at the local level in different ways. And so getting at the kind of local message and
the local signals is what we're really interested in.
Doing a sort of material reconstruction of extreme events and so hopefully tracing back
the records to periods that we haven't got, you know, other sources of information for.
So we've got instrumental weather records that tell us about extremes going back to
the later part of say the 19th century, longer in some areas, but equally, you know, we're
interested in sort of extending that record back to, to sort of think about frequency
and duration of extreme events as well. So there's a kind of material reconstruction
element to the project as well as a kind of conceptual element to the project.
We're interested in the way in which people remember things differently, as much as the
events themselves. So, yes, we're going to be exploring the events that have taken place
and when they took place, and the kinds of events that have taken place going back to
about 1700. But we're also interested in the, the different ways in which people have remembered
those things and how those things, those events, have been remembered through technology, adaptation,
narrative, folklore, myth, legend, poetry, all these different kinds of thing.
Where on earth do you begin, because aren't we obsessed by the weather, the British? There
must be an enormous amount of material out there?
It is a bit of an obsession, and that's why this, this project has the potential to be
quite a rich project in many respects. We're going to begin with the archives. There's
many different types of historical documentary material that we can tap into, in the different
regions that concern us in the project. And so we're beginning with the archival records
and testimonies and diaries that we can, we can trace and which we can explore for excerpts
of information about the weather. And there's lots of these in different parts of the UK.
Because this obsession that we have is not a new obsession, it's something that's being
going on for hundreds of years, even longer. But the documentary records that we're interested
in exploring go back to about 1700.
Why did you think that we needed to do a research project like this?
I think there's a lot of interest in big things like climate change and big issues to do with
the climate that focus on things like global warming. Extreme events in, in particular,
are probably the most interesting aspects of, of climate changes at the big scale. Simply
because they are, they kind of take people unawares, and people have to, have to react
in quite rapid ways to them. And they're not the norm, and they're not anticipated, in
many respects. So things like floods and droughts can have quite dramatic impact as a result.
And they can engender very different kinds of responses as a result. So we're interested
in looking at the extremes for that reason.
There's the archive side of the project, but there's also the oral history side of the
project. And one of the things we are very interested in doing is talking to local communities
about experiences, understanding of extreme events. And so these will be local communities
in our case study areas. And we're interested in the way in which they remember things,
but also how extreme events have become embedded within cultural, their cultural fabric, in
the form of, different, many different forms. And from when people decide to put their washing
out, to, to, to myths and legends that have folk memory attached to them, or whatever.
We're interested in weather lore, L.O.R.E., weather lore. We're interested in those kinds
of folkloric memories of weather, as much as we are in actual memories of weather. So,
you know, and we're seeing whether any of them have got, you know, roots in reality,
or whether any of them have been sort of changed over time, modified over time. So, interested in all that.
We're not specifically looking at places like Boscastle or Cockermouth, or you know Hull,
for example. But we are interested in looking at specific regions where, which have been
identified as being at risk or susceptible to increasing extremes, or increased frequency
and duration of extremes, to do with floods, droughts, heat waves and, and those kinds of extremes.
I'm not in the business of prediction, but I think it will give us a handle on how
people have reacted in the past to events that we might experience in the future, and
that's always interesting, and always valid in terms of looking at what works and what
doesn't work in terms of adaptation.