John Kington – författare

Reviewing the history and causes of climatic change and evaluating regional models, this New Naturalist volume offers an important analysis of climatic variations.Much has happened in our knowledge of climate and weather over the past fifty years. The recording of relations between weather and natural history has continued to be of constant interest, with the weather providing a continual and essential backdrop to natural history accounts. But the significance of this backdrop has been very much widened by our better understanding of climate change and its effects on flora, fauna and biodiversity and also by our increased knowledge of historical climates and weather events.In this timely addition to the New Naturalist Library, leading climatologist John Kington offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the diverse climate of the British Isles. Examining the ways in which regional climates evolve from the interplay of meteorological conditions and geography of the British Isles, the author analyses the climatic characteristics and provides a historical overview of changing weather patterns, which is complemented by fascinating and never-before published photographs.Kington reviews the many ways in which people have observed and recorded weather conditions throughout the ages. It is a story based on a rich and varied resource stretching back 2000 years. This approach has allowed climatic trends, anomalies and extremes to be identified over the past two millennia, putting our present experience of weather into striking perspective.

John Kington's book, the first of its kind, gives a definitive account of the weather in the 1780s over Europe based on historical weather maps. These charts are unique in forming the earliest series of daily synoptic weather maps constructed with quantitative instrumental data, and as such represent an important contribution to the history of climate.