"Climate Since AD 1500" presents a new perspective on the "Little Ice Age" and on the climate of the twentieth century. The editors have gathered together over fifty contributors from all over the world to provide as wide a geographical dimension as possible. Leading scientists in their fields, they present climatic and meteorological records of climatic variations available for the last 500 years, including research from several areas not previously recorded in English. These records include historical documents, long instrumental records, tree rings and ice core records, and records based on worldwide current research. An introductory chapter provides an explanation of the methods throughout and the book concludes with a summary of data from all the various records.

1 Climate since A.D. 1500: Introduction SECTION A: DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 2 Hudson's Bay Company ships' log-books as sources of sea ice data, 1751-1870 3 Historical and instrumental evidence of climate: western Hudson Bay, Canada, 1714-1850 4 Historical climate records from the northeastern United States, 1640 to 1900 5 Documentary evidence for changes in the climate of Iceland, A.D. 1500 to 1800 6 Monthly temperature and precipitation in central Europe from 1525-1979: quantifying documentary evidence on weather and its effects 7 Reconstructing the climate of northern Italy from archive sources 8 Three historical data series on floods and anomalous climatic events in Italy 9 Documentary evidence from the U.S.S.R. 10 Reconstruction of the 18th century summer precipitation of Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, China, based on the Clear and Rain Records 11 Beijing summer temperatures since 1724 12 Reconstruction of rainfall variation of the Baiu in historical times 13 Climatic variations in the longest instrumental records SECTION B: DENDROCLIMATIC EVIDENCE 14 Mapping climate using tree-rings from western North America 15 Dendroclimatic evidence from northern North America 16 Dendroclimatic evidence from the Great Plains of the United States 17 Dendroclimatic evidence from eastern North America 18 Dendroclimatic evidence from southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa 19 Recent dendroclimatic evidence of northern and central European summer temperatures 20 Dendroclimatic evidence from the northern Soviet Union 21 Dendroclimatic evidence from the western Himalaya 22 Dendroclimatic studies in China 23 South American dendroclimatological records 24 Dendroclimatic evidence from Australasia SECTION C: ICE CORE EVIDENCE 25 Ice core climate signals from Mount Logan, Yukon A.D. 1700-1987 26 The Arctic from Svalbard to Severnaya Zemlya: climatic reconstructions from ice cores 27 Ice core evidence from Peru and China 28 Ice core evidence from the Antarctic Peninsula region 29 Paleoenvironmental conditions in Antarctica since A.D. 1500: ice core evidence 31 Records of explosive volcanic eruptions over the last 500 years 32 The historical record of EI Nino events SECTION E: SUMMARY33 Climatic variations over the last 500 years 34 Recent developments in studies of climate since A.D. 1500