How Does Generational Memory Distort Our Understanding of Climate Extremes?

Profile Picture of - Shuang Song

Shuang Song

Abstract information

In this video, SHUANG SONG explores how perceptual bias shapes historical records of climate change. By comparing centuries of Chinese climate archives with tree-ring proxy data, he shows that each generation recalibrates what counts as “normal” climate conditions. His work introduces a method to detect and correct this bias, revealing how collective memory influences our understanding of past extremes and future climate risks.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101257

Researcher

Dr. Shuang Song is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, where he leads the COFLAB project on human-water interactions in the Yellow River Basin, China. His research focuses on the long-term co-evolution of water management and human society, employing social-ecological modeling and agent-based simulations. Song earned his PhD in Physical Geography from Beijing Normal University in 2023 and holds a B.S. in Physical Geography and a second major in History from Sun Yat-Sen University. He previously held a postdoctoral position at Beijing Normal University and has published extensively on socio-environmental systems.

Institution information

Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology

The Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (MPI-GEA) focuses on the interrelationships between natural and human-made systems, looking into the deep past and distant future to examine how humanity has driven the emergence of the Anthropocene – the geological period in which human activities began significantly impacting our planet’s climate and ecosystems – and how we can still positively influence its course. The transdisciplinary research at MPI-GEA will bring together research areas represented by all three scientific sections of the MPG: Biology & Medicine; Chemistry, Physics and Technology; and Human Sciences. Corresponding inter- and transdisciplinary research projects concern, for example, planetary urbanisation, the global food system, and global material, energy and information flows.

Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology
Cover Photo of - Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology

Original Publication

Archival and palaeoenvironmental documentation of extreme events reveals perceptual bias behind collective memory

Latest Thinking,

Song Shuang

Published in

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Compass

M. Enard

As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life as an Orientalist.

Citation

Shuang Song, 

Latest Thinking, 

How Does Generational Memory Distort Our Understanding of Climate Extremes?, 

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101257, 

Credits:

© Shuang Song 

and Latest Thinking

This work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0