Patterns of the Impacts of Climate Change on Civilization

Climate change has profoundly impacted the development of human civilization. It is one of the basic forces that have led to the rise and fall of regional civilization. The manifestations and ultimate consequences of the impacts of climate change on social development are the products of the interaction between climate change and human society, which are both related to the characteristics of climate change and to the adaptation of human society. Based on the published papers on climate change and civilization during the past 20 years, five patterns of the impacts of climate change on civilization were summarized. They are periodic changes, pulse, adaptive transition, collapse, migration and replacement. Periodic changes and pulse occurred when climate change impacts were within the resilience of human social systems. Thus, there was no need for major structural changes in the human society. Adaptive transition was a fruit of successful response of the human system when the extent of abrupt climatic change or the trend of climate change exceeded the available range of human social systems In contrast, collapse was a result of failed response of the human system. Migration and replacement, in which people moved from their original living place to other regions and sometimes even replaced the aboriginal civilizations with the colonized civilization, could occur no matter the impacts of climate change had exceeded the resilience of human system. The summarization is expected to be useful for the understanding of the mechanism on the relationship between climate change and civilization, and for coping with the challenges of future global climate change.