Anke von Kügelgen on Contemporary Islamic Thought

Anke von Kügelgen joins Peter to discuss developments over the last century or so, including attitudes towards past thinkers like Avicenna, Averroes and Ibn Taymiyya. This interview is based on research conducted to write a forthcoming book on Philosophy in the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th centuries, to be co-edited by Prof von Kügelgen together Professor Ulrich Rudolph, and Michael Frey as redactor. It will be the fourth volume of a German Overview of the whole history of philosophy in the Islamic world (Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie in der islamischen Welt, published by Schwabe Verlag in Basel). Prof von Kügelgen would like to recognize the contribution of her collaborators: her main partner for the philosophy in the Arab speaking countries is Sarhan Dhouib, originally from Tunesia, now at the University of Kassel. For Muslim Southasia, she is working with Jan Peter Hartung from the SOAS in London, and for Iran, Reza Hajatpour, Katajun Amirpur and Roman Seidel who are all at present at German Universities. The part on Philosophy in the Ottoman Empire is written by Sait Özervarlı from the Yildiz Teknik Universitesi in Istanbul and for Turkey by Christoph Herzog from the University of Bamberg.

The spatial and linguistic division of the city of Malaga

The city of Malaga underwent considerable growth in the 19th and 20th centuries. The territorial expansion paired with a massive influx of immigrants occurred in three waves and as a consequence the city of Malaga remains divided into three different parts up to today. The differences between these three neighbourhoods of the city lie in the type of houses, different cultural and industrial activities, socioeconomic level, and very interestingly, also in speech. Thus, the aim of this study is an examination of the interrelation between speech (phonetic features) and urban space in Malaga. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis was used, based on two types of data: 1) production data stemming from recordings of 120 speakers; 2) perception data (salience, estimated frequency of use, attitude, spatial and social perception, imitation) which was collected from several surveys with 120 participants each. Results show that the speech production data divides the city of Malaga clearly into three different parts. This tripartition is confirmed by the analysis of the perception data. Moreover, the habitants of these three areas are perceived as different social types, to whom a range of social features is attributed. That is, certain linguistic features, the different neighbourhoods of the city and the social characteristics associated with them are undergoing a process of indexicalization and iconization. As a result, the linguistic features in question function as identity markers on the intraurban level.

On the variability of return periods of European winter precipitation extremes over the last three centuries

We investigate the changes of extreme European winter (December-February) precipitation back to 1700 and show for various European regions that return periods of extremely wet and dry winters are subject to significant changes both before and after the onset of anthropogenic influences. Generally, winter precipitation has become more extreme. We also examine the spatial pattern of the changes of the extremes covering the last 300 years where data quality is sufficient. Over central and Eastern Europe dry winters occurred more frequently during the 18th and the second part of the 19th century relative to 1951–2000. Dry winters were less frequent during both the 18th and 19th century over the British Isles and the Mediterranean. Wet winters have been less abundant during the last three centuries compared to 1951–2000 except during the early 18th century in central Europe. Although winter precipitation extremes are affected by climate change, no obvious connection of these changes was found to solar, volcanic or anthropogenic forcing. However, physically meaningful interpretation with atmospheric circulation changes was possible.

Searching the Rhone delta channel in Lake Geneva since François‐Alphonse Forel

In the late 19th century, F.A. FOREL led investigations of the Rhone River delta area of Lake Geneva that resulted in the dis- covery of a textbook example of a river-fed delta system containing impressive subaquatic channels. Well ahead of the marine counterparts, scientific observations and interpretations of water currents shaping the delta edifice for the first time documented how underflow currents carry cold, suspension-laden waters from the river mouth all the way to the deep basin. These early investigations of the Rhone delta laid the basis for follow-up studies in the 20th and 21th centuries. Sediment coring, water-column measurements, manned submersible diving, seismic reflection profiling and bathymetric sur- veying eventually provided a rich database to unravel the key erosional and depositional processes, further documenting the impact of human-induced changes in the catchment. With the merging of old and new scientific knowledge, today a comprehensive understanding prevails of how a delta changes through time, how its channels are formed, and what potential natural hazards may be related to its evolution. New and efficient bathymetric techniques, paired with novel coring operations, provided a time-series of morphologic evolution showing and quantifying the high dynamics of the delta/channel evolution in an unprecedented temporal and spatial reso- lution. Future investigations will continue to further quantify these dynamic processes and to link the evolution of the subaquatic domain with changes and processes in the catchment and with natural hazards. Its size, easy access, and large variety of states and processes will continue to make the Rhone delta area a perfect ‘laboratory’ in which general processes can be studied that could be upscaled or downscaled to other marine and lacustrine deltas.

A chrysophyte-based quantitative reconstruction of winter severity from varved lake sediments in NE Poland during the past millennium and its relationship to natural climate variability

Chrysophyte cysts are recognized as powerful proxies of cold-season temperatures. In this paper we use the relationship between chrysophyte assemblages and the number of days below 4 °C (DB4 °C) in the epilimnion of a lake in northern Poland to develop a transfer function and to reconstruct winter severity in Poland for the last millennium. DB4 °C is a climate variable related to the length of the winter. Multivariate ordination techniques were used to study the distribution of chrysophytes from sediment traps of 37 low-land lakes distributed along a variety of environmental and climatic gradients in northern Poland. Of all the environmental variables measured, stepwise variable selection and individual Redundancy analyses (RDA) identified DB4 °C as the most important variable for chrysophytes, explaining a portion of variance independent of variables related to water chemistry (conductivity, chlorides, K, sulfates), which were also important. A quantitative transfer function was created to estimate DB4 °C from sedimentary assemblages using partial least square regression (PLS). The two-component model (PLS-2) had a coefficient of determination of View the MathML sourceRcross2 = 0.58, with root mean squared error of prediction (RMSEP, based on leave-one-out) of 3.41 days. The resulting transfer function was applied to an annually-varved sediment core from Lake Żabińskie, providing a new sub-decadal quantitative reconstruction of DB4 °C with high chronological accuracy for the period AD 1000–2010. During Medieval Times (AD 1180–1440) winters were generally shorter (warmer) except for a decade with very long and severe winters around AD 1260–1270 (following the AD 1258 volcanic eruption). The 16th and 17th centuries and the beginning of the 19th century experienced very long severe winters. Comparison with other European cold-season reconstructions and atmospheric indices for this region indicates that large parts of the winter variability (reconstructed DB4 °C) is due to the interplay between the oscillations of the zonal flow controlled by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the influence of continental anticyclonic systems (Siberian High, East Atlantic/Western Russia pattern). Differences with other European records are attributed to geographic climatological differences between Poland and Western Europe (Low Countries, Alps). Striking correspondence between the combined volcanic and solar forcing and the DB4 °C reconstruction prior to the 20th century suggests that winter climate in Poland responds mostly to natural forced variability (volcanic and solar) and the influence of unforced variability is low.

Long-term summer temperature variations in the Pyrenees from detrended stable carbon isotopes

Substantial effort has recently been put into the development of climate reconstructions from tree-ring stable carbon isotopes, though the interpretation of long-term trends retained in such timeseries remains challenging. Here we use detrended δ13C measurements in Pinus uncinata tree-rings, from the Spanish Pyrenees, to reconstruct decadal variations in summer temperature back to the 13th century. The June-August temperature signal of this reconstruction is attributed using decadally as well as annually resolved, 20th century δ13C data. Results indicate that late 20th century warming has not been unique within the context of the past 750 years. Our reconstruction contains greater am-plitude than previous reconstructions derived from traditional tree-ring density data, and describes particularly cool conditions during the late 19th century. Some of these differences, including early warm periods in the 14th and 17th centuries, have been retained via δ13C timeseries detrending - a novel approach in tree-ring stable isotope chronology development. The overall reduced variance in earlier studies points to an underestimation of pre-instrumental summer temperature variability de-rived from traditional tree-ring parameters.

A 600 years warm-season temperature record from varved sediments of Lago Plomo, Northern Patagonia, Chile (47°S)

High-resolution records of calibrated proxy data for the past millennium are fundamental to place current changes into the context of pre-industrial natural forced and unforced variability. Although the need for regional spatially-explicit comprehensive reconstructions is widely recognized, the proxy data sources are still scarce, particularly for the Southern Hemisphere and especially for South America. We present a 600-year long warm season temperature record from varved sediments of Lago Plomo, a proglacial lake of the Northern Patagonian Ice field in Southern Chile (46°59′S, 72°52′W, 203 m a.s.l.). The thickness of the bright summer sediment layer relative to the dark winter layer (measured as total brightness; % reflectance 400–730 nm) is calibrated against warm season SONDJF temperature (1900–2009; r = 0.58, p(aut) = 0.056, RE = 0.52; CE = 0.15, RMSEP = 0.28 °C; five-year triangular filtered data). In Lago Plomo, warm summer temperatures lead to enhanced glacier melt and suspended sediment transport, which results in thicker light summer layers and to brighter sediments. Although Patagonia shows pronounced regional differences in decadal temperature trends and variability, the 600 years temperature reconstruction from Lago Plomo compares favourably with other regional/continental temperature records, but also emphasizes significant regional differences for which no data and information existed so far. These regional differences seem to be real as they are also reflected in modern climate data sets (1900–2010). The reconstruction shows pronounced subdecadal – multidecadal variability with cold phases during parts of the Little Ice Age (16th and 18th centuries) and in the beginning of the 20th century. The most prominent warm phase is the 19th century which is as warm as the second half of the 20th century. The exceptional summer warmth AD 1780–1810 is also found in other archives of Northern Patagonia and Central Chile. Our record shows the delayed 20th century warming in the Southern Hemisphere. The comparison between winter precipitation and summer temperature (inter-seasonal coupling) from Lago Plomo reveals alternating phases with parallel and contrasting decadal trends of winter precipitation and summer temperature (positive and negative running correlations Rwinter PP; summer TT). This observation from the sediment proxy data is also confirmed by two sets of reanalysis data for the 20th century. Reanalysis data show that phases with negative correlations between winter precipitation and summer temperature (e.g., dry winters and warm summers) at Lago Plomo are characteristic for periods when circumpolar Westerly flow is displaced southward and enhanced around 60°S.