Cultural Practices and Climate Experiences

Cultural practices and climate experiences intersect across time and place to shape how communities perceive, respond to and remember weather phenomena. Across the globe, traditions of storytelling, ritual, architecture and material culture embody local knowledge of seasonal rhythms and extreme events. These practices confer a sense of place, identity and belonging, while guiding adaptation strategies that range from vernacular building techniques to the commemoration of significant weather‐related milestones. As climate change alters both the frequency and character of environmental conditions, longstanding practices of weather observation and interpretation are being renegotiated. Researchers are increasingly attentive to intangible dimensions of climate experience — the memories, expectations and projected futures that inform decision-making and behaviour. At the same time, socio-technical interventions, such as automated environmental control and heat-housing mapping, reveal deep inequalities in exposure and resilience. A holistic understanding of cultural-climatic entanglements combines ethnographic, historical and quantitative approaches to document how diverse groups live with, adapt to and memorialise changing climates. Such insights have practical applications for policy-makers, planners and heritage professionals seeking to foster inclusive adaptation and safeguard threatened forms of cultural heritage. In this light, the study of cultural practices and climate experiences emerges as a vital field for navigating the social dimensions of climate risk and resilience on a global scale.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Cultural Practices and Climate Experiences publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in cultural practices and climate experiences across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Weather-heritage: The collective memories, narratives and rituals associated with local weather patterns, treated as intangible cultural heritage.

Ambient environment: The surrounding conditions of air or medium that envelop people, including temperature, humidity and air movement.

Sequence analysis: A statistical method for identifying and characterising trajectories or patterns in ordered data sequences, such as heat-housing exposure over time.

Emplaced experience: Place-specific sensory perception and engagement with the environment shaped by local cultural and material contexts.

References

1. Weather, heritage, and memory. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (2024).
2. Negotiating nature's weather worlds in the context of life with sight impairment. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2019).
3. Microclimates of Urban Reproduction: The Limits of Automating Environmental Control. Antipode (2019).
4. Uneven ambient futures: Intersecting heat and housing trajectories in England and Wales. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2025).