Making Climate Knowledge

el niño

named by Peruvian fishers and described by them for centuries; weakening of trade winds in South Pacific, leads to drought in Southern Africa, decrease of monsoon season in SE Asia, greater storms in SW US, and thermocline off Peruvian shore weakens so no nutrients and no fish - very narrow def that improperly prepares people when weather conditions don’t exactly match - GAP BETWEEN GLOBAL SCIENCE AND LOCAL EXPERIENCE

Gilbert Walker (1868-1958)

head of Indian meteorological department and director of observatories in India, predicted weather patterns in world by using British network of colonies, emphasized statistical analysis over physical explanation, tested correlations and periodicity, his method focused on centers of action, places that were characterized by consistently high or low pressure, changes in intensity and location of pressure centers could be linked to widespread changes in weather - IDed oscillations (like ENSO), supported careers of Indian scientists but still agent of empire

southern oscillation (1924)

Walker described it as a swaying of pressure on a big scale between the Pacific and Indian oceans, reflect infrastructure and priorities of British Empire - colonial provenance of data, role of empires in enforcing measurement standards, use of cheap Indian labor

dynamic climatology

climatology once abstract planetary physics or descriptive local geography but now understood as the application of heat and fluid motion to explain climatic conditions in their past and present distribution on the surface of the earth - use new scaling tools like models of atmospheric motion, Hadley cells, and mixing coefficients; scaling system: turbulence on multiple scales transports heat and angular momentum from equator to poles - planetary climate

isotherms

Alexander von Humboldt, lines on maps that connect points of similar temperature at a given time or average over given period, a way to unify diversity, make regions os the world that have similar climates like temporal and torrid zones of Aristotlian geography

Julius Hann (1839-1921)

director of Habsburg Imperial-Royal central institute for meteorology, “handbook/atlas/textbook of meteorology”, mapped isotherms across world which was a grueling and minute task that added up to a global understanding of wind and temperature patterns; ability to put local details on global scale and in appropriate relation to a synthetic overview

desiccation theory

deforestation reduces rainfall and, conversely, planting trees brings climatic benefits, colonizers used this to justify seizing Indigenous land bc thought they “desiccated” their forests and weren’t responsible to care for them

desertification (1927)

followed desiccation, used to license seizures of land from Indigenous peoples; post 1945 UN warns it’s a global problem, positive feedback loop

forest-climate question

there is a relationship between forests and climate - deforestation increases albedo → cooler surfaces → less warm air rising → less rainfall vs afforestation → lower albedo → warmer surface → more warm air rising → more rainfall; forests deemed “public good” but that restricts peasants from using them for fuel and food and reserves them for state-sponsored timber and construction (railways)

James McCune Smith

born enslaved and educated in Lower Manhattan, 1st black physician, abolitionist and didn’t favor relocation, against racial segregation and black-white binary, Americans are the same by benefit of being exposed to the same climate, one that is favorable for physical and mental development - 1 race based on humoral theory of race

Sahara Sea

thought southern Africa was once dotted with lakes but Indigenous Africans desiccated the climate, colonists proposed afforestation and climate engineering, Indigenous Africans blamed colonizers, bad farming practices, and Africans with guns; Suez canal connecting Mediterranean to the Red Sea; flooding proposed by Francois Roudaire and Donald Mackenzie; to allow easier access and trade with West Africa, fear and hope of changing weather in Europe

Atlantropa, 1932

Hermann Sörgel (1885-1952), dam across Strait of Gibraltar to provide power to pump water into Sahara, fear of Africans growing in number and white people becoming racial minority - linked to environmental and racial/colonial anxieties; fit Hitler’s ambitions to increase “living space”, racial ideologies, and ruling the world through energy and access