The ’problem of scale’ - spatial and temporal - has been the single most challenging dimension in discussing climate change across human and physical geography. Nature as well as society may be understood as “endlessly mobile, restless, given to violence and unpredictability”[1] (Massey 2006: 38). However, the scales at which we often understand the spatio-temporal movements of nature and society are often very different. This paper comes out of a project on the social vulnerability of climate change involving physical and human geographers at NTNU. First, we analyse the increasing body of literature that advocates and discuss working across the divides between human and physical geography. Second, we explore different and similar understandings of spatial and temporal scale in human and physical geography. In the third section, we present the social vulnerability to climate change (VULCLIM) project. In the fourth and final section, we explore ways in which we have dealt the notion of temporal and spatial scale across human and physical geographies in this particular project and reflect on the way forward.

[1] Massey, D. 2006. Landscape as provocation. Reflections on moving mountains. Journal of Material Culture 11(1/2): 33/48