History of Science Society, Denver, Colorado, November 9, 2001

Climate and Culture: Contexts, Concepts, and Choices

co-sponsors: History of Earth Sciences Society; Geological Society of America, History of Geology Division; Commission on History of Meteorology (IUHPS)

Chair Ronald Rainger (Texas Tech University)

Organizer and Commentator, James R. Fleming (Colby College)

Airs and the Ars Chymia: Early Modern Physico-Chymical Concepts of Atmospheric Change
Margaret Garber (University of California–San Diego)

This paper explores a collection of letters and treatises published by Gottfried Wendelin (1580 -1667) regarding a baffling meteorological event popularly referred to as the "Bloody Rain of Brussels." The author attests that bizarre events such as bloody rains, prodigious thunderstorms and other "strange facts" offered Imperial Physicians opportunities to ponder causes of normal atmospheric change. Notable by their exaggerated effects and made more likely by numerous witnesses, ominous events motivated Imperial Physicians to articulate natural causes that might curb popular appetites for causes supernatural or apocalyptic. The correspondence demonstrates a collective effort to arrive at a natural philosophical cause that was also chymical. Knowledge from the ars chymia could bring experience to bear upon causes because (the authors presupposed) earth distributed its mineral contents into the air through its own natural chymia. The precise mechanism perpetuating earth's action became pivotal in the debate and the letters provide a preponderance of physico-chymical "models" designed to resolve questions about atmospheric change. Although the authors weighed criteria for truth differently, they attempted to agree upon a nexus of relevant knowledge domains including ancient and recent natural histories, generative theory and chymical experience. Into the balance the authors added the social chymistry of a public who expected regional problems to be solved by renowned locals, those most clearly adept at both truth showing and telling.

Attitudes Concerning Latitudes: The Origin and Early Evolution of the "Köppen-Zone" System of Climate Classification
Mott T. Greene, (University of Puget Sound)

Here is a piece of real "social construction"–the negotiated development between 1884 and 1928 of a classification scheme for the earth's climate regimes based (with varying emphases at different times) on agriculture, anthropology, geology, botany, rainfall, temperature, latitude, and proximity to the oceans. This scheme, invented and regularly modified by the German meteorologist Wladimir Köppen (1846-1940) is still the basic ordering of states used by geographers and climatologists to discriminate climate zones. It has an interesting history, beginning with Köppen's childhood experiences in Russia–and provides a beautiful example of how a series of narratives based on contingent choices and anchored in the idiosyncratic, historical experience of a particular individual may become reified into formalized concepts with universal application. As such it is a usefully iconic representation of the way many of the earth sciences–including meteorology, oceanography, geology, and paleontology, conducted much of their business in the twentieth century.

Computing Global Climate Change: The Early Development of General Circulation Models (GCMs) in Britain
Sang-Hyun Kim (University of Edinburgh)

Until relatively recently, studies of climate and its change had been considered largely descriptive without solid theoretical underpinning. They had been rather overlooked by meteorologists and had quite often been left to geographers, geologists or paleobotanists. With the aids of new computing technology, however, climate studies gradually moved towards highly mathematical endeavors. By the late 1970s, climate research became more or less dominated by dynamical meteorologists, atmospheric physicists and physical oceanographers armed with complex numerical modeling as a principal methodology. This is not to say that other lines of approach were insignificant. In fact, empirically-oriented climatological works such as those cultivated by Hubert Lamb played an instrumental role in raising the issue of climate change and variability during the 1960s and early 1970s. On the other hand, many meteorologists, from the very beginning, believed that climate and its change could only be properly studied using physico-mathematical models. This tendency was particularly strong in Britain. Since the early 1960s, the British Meteorological Office had begun to devote more of its climate research efforts to the development of general circulation models (GCMs). Consequently, Hubert Lamb, despite his international reputation as a pioneer of historical climatology, faced an increasing lack of support and eventually decided to leave the Office. In this presentation, by tracing the historical and social contexts of early GCM developments in Britain, I will demonstrate that styles of scientific practice, disciplinary traditions, institutional cultures, as well as broad political environments all contributed to the transformation of climate science during the 1960s and 1970s.