Emmanuel Garnier
Historian, senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2010-2015) and 1st Class CNRS Research Professor, I am interested in climate, extreme events and risks over the last 500 years in the fields of climate, geology (volcanism, earthquakes, landslides), epidemiology in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. In addition to their frequency and intensity, these hazards are indicators of social vulnerabilities and developers of coping strategies. My work leads me to collaborate with various public scientific institutions (IRSN, CEA, Ministry of Ecology), Industrial Partners and private (insurers, start-up). My scientific activity offered me the opportunity to be invited, as a visiting professor, by the Universities of Cambridge (UK), Geneva (Swiss), Kyoto (Japan), Kunming (China) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA).
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Papers by Emmanuel Garnier
Extrait des fonds d’archives conservées de nos jours dans les régions côtières et insulaires, le présent travail souligne la dimension patrimoniale, et donc socio-culturelle, de littoraux bouleversés ces dernières décennies par les dynamiques migratoires et les politiques d’aménagement. Au-delà, il espère montrer que la vulnérabilité croissante de ces territoires n’est pas forcément une fatalité, si tant est que l’on soit prêt à tenir compte de ce retour d’expérience en matière de réduction de la vulnérabilité et de ges- tion durable.
Avec l'émergence des Etats modernes, la « Ligne bleue » suscite de nouveaux enjeux engendrés par la lutte entre Habsbourg et Bourbon. Aux ambitions économiques liées aux filons métallifères s'ajoutent désormais les visées navales de la monarchie française qui promeut le sapin au rang de matériau stratégique. C'est ainsi qu'à la soldatesque des années 1600 succède le temps de la centralisation pour des communautés très attachées à leurs libertés. Confrontés à une politique orientée désormais vers le marché, Alsaciens, Lorrains et Comtois n'ont de cesse de défendre leurs usages, une lutte inégale qui débouche après 1750 sur un climat de délinquance et de violence généralisées. La nouvelle de la prise de la Bastille dans les vallées donne alors le signal de la révolte contre l'Ancien Régime seigneurial et royal.
Droughts are a factor of historic durability and because of their impacts on societies, they left multiple indicators in the archives of the last 500 years. For the record, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the general term of ‘drought’ covers different notions. In the most frequent meaning of the word, it is synonymic of a pluviometric deficit and an extreme climate event. It is thus important to understand that for the historian droughts are viewed through the 'social signature' of these extreme events as recorded over the centuries in the European archives. They can thus be appreciably different from the definitions used by the hydrologists, and need to be assessed and categorized according to the Historical Severity Drought Scale in order to provide usual comparative data series.
Droughts are well-known in history and because of their impacts on societies there are multiple evidences in the archives of the last 500 years. This report shows how combining textual and instrumental data recorded in the archives since the 16th century improved knowledge on European droughts between 1500 and 1950. Results are presented based on a specific method well adapted to the content of the available sources. In this context, several cases in Britain, France, Jucar Basin (Spain), Upper Rhine valley and Syros (Greece) were investigated to better understand the variation of these climatic extreme events during the last 500 years across European regions and their social and economic impacts on Europe’s ancient societies.
The Historical Severity Drought Scale (HSDS), which was used in this study to estimate the severity of historic droughts prior to the availability of instrumental data, showed to be a reliable measure. Key drought events in Europe since 1500 were identified (e.g. 1566, 1666, 1719, 1818, 1893, 1921 drought) based on a range of hydrometeorological information and documentary evidence of the impacts. An intercomparison of common reconstructed long drought series in England, the Ile-de-France and the Upper Rhine Valley showed that the English droughts were identical to those in the Ile-de-France in 32% of cases for the period 1500-2009 against 26% in the Upper Rhine Valley.
Long term historical reconstructions of droughts are very useful for the climatologist and the hydrologist. History can be a mean to improve reliability of climatological and hydrological models by exploring if these models can capture past drought events of 50 years ago or more.