Concern has risen that current global warming and more frequent extreme events such as droughts and floods will increase conflict around the world. This concern has spurred both social science research on contemporary climate, peace, and conflict as well as research in the historical sciences on past climate, weather, warfare, and violence. This perspectives article compares these two fields of scholarship and examines how each may benefit the other. It finds significant convergences in methods and insights across contemporary and historical research as well as persistent patterns in causal pathways between climate and conflict. Contemporary climate, peace, and conflict (CPC) research may sharpen methods and causal models for historical researchers. Historical studies, particularly those informed by contemporary research, may elucidate deep origins and long-term effects of climate-related conflicts. For policymakers and the public, history offers comprehensible ways to make sense of complex and contingent linkages and to construct cogent narratives of the past as well as storylines for the future.

CNRS Aix Marseille University Marseille France

Department of Geography Masaryk University Brno Czechia

Department of Peace and Conflict Research Uppsala University Uppsala Sweden

Department of Political History Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki Snellmaninkatu 14 A PO Box 54 00014 Helsinki Finland

Environmental History Georgetown University Washington USA

German Maritime Museum Leibniz Institute for Maritime History Bremerhaven Germany

Global Change Research Institute Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czechia

Graduate Institute for Sustainability Management and Environmental Education National Taiwan Normal University Taipei Taiwan

Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong China

Insitute of Contemporary History University of Évora Évora Portugal

Institut d'Història de la Ciència The Autonomous University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

Institut de Diagnòstic Ambiental i Estudis de l'Aigua Barcelona Spain

Institute for Archaeology Conservation and History University of Oslo Oslo Norway

Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder USA

Institute of Environmental Social Science and Geography Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources University of Freiburg Freiburg i Br Germany

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Sofia Bulgaria

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Postboks 7024 St Olavs Plass Oslo 0130 Norway

Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences Academia Sinica Taipei Taiwan

Research group The Nordic Little Ice Age Center for Advanced Studies Oslo Oslo Norway

School of Archaeology UCD University College Dublin Dublin Ireland

SIPRI's Climate Change and Risk Programme Stockholm Sweden

Stefansson Arctic Institute Akureyri Iceland

University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

University of Bern Bern Switzerland

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