Episode 09

Climate, Seasons, and the Changing Calendar

When the year moves

Paleoclimate, the Year Without a Summer, phenological records, and cultures that retune festivals when the ice, the blossom, or the monsoon arrives on a new date.

Beats

• Ice cores and tree rings as archives of years.
• 1816: a calendar year that would not warm.
• Resilience as the right to rename a season.

Terms

Phenology

The timing of recurring life events — bloom, migration, ice-out.

Year Without a Summer

1816, after Tambora, when harvest calendars failed in the north.

Discussion

1. If cherry trees bloom two weeks early, has the calendar failed or the climate?
2. What would an honest seasonal calendar look like in 2100?