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Notes & Letters

Introducing “Connecting Oceanic Asia: Production and Application of Meteorological Knowledge”

Gutzlaff Signal Tower at the Zikawei Observatory in Shanghai

A new special issue of the History of Meteorology

By Xiao Liu and Xiaoping Xue (Tsinghua University)

When reflecting on Asia’s past, our attention often turns to land-based empires, national boundaries, or dynastic politics. Yet the oceans that surround and connect the region—the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Western Pacific—have long been crucial spaces of exchange, mobility, and contestation. These maritime worlds were also environments of uncertainty, shaped by storms, shifting monsoons, and changing seasonal cycles. To navigate, exploit, and govern these waters, states, empires, and local communities alike relied on meteorological knowledge.

This is the starting point of our special issue, Connecting Oceanic Asia: Production and Application of Meteorological Knowledge, which invites us to reflect on how weather observation, forecasting, and scientific infrastructures were central to the making of modern Asia. Meteorological knowledge in Asia was rarely produced in isolation. It emerged through layered exchanges between indigenous traditions of weather lore, colonial and imperial science, and global networks of information sharing.

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Categories
Notes & Letters Publications

Writing “Imperial Weather: Meteorology, Science, and the Environment in Colonial Malaya.”

By Fiona Williamson, ICHM Co-President and Singapore Management University 

Over the past few years, I have been deeply engaged in the project of understanding the relationship between colonialism and the weather in British Malaya. I began this project with an interest in the nascent meteorological services in the region, from uncovering an early observatory experiment in Singapore in 1841 which was a small part of a global investigation of magnetism, to the advent of a small, but dedicated meteorological service in 1929. Across this period, it was obvious that the British government were not keen to invest resources into meteorology, as they had in some of their other Asian colonies, including India and Hong Kong.

Continue reading “Writing “Imperial Weather: Meteorology, Science, and the Environment in Colonial Malaya.””
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Seminar

Exploring the History of Meteorology, Race, and Empire

Below is a recording from an online panel featuring several ICHM Officers and members, titled

Observing History: Panel Discussion on Current Work on the History of Meteorology, Race, and Empire

If you are having trouble accessing the embedded version above, the full video can also be found here.

This recording is from a session that took place on 17th October at the UK Met Office’s annual OpMet Conference 2024, which was organised by the Met Office’s EM-Power network, it’s Minority Ethnic Network as part of its Black History Month 2024 campaign. The session features contributions from Dr Fiona Williamson (Singapore Management University and Co-President, ICHM), Dr Tom Simpson (University of Warwick) and Dr Roger Turner (Science History Institute, Philadelphia).

The EM-Power network is led by Rohan Jain and Eleanor Wong, both Senior Operational Meteorologists at RAF Odiham/JOMOC Northwood and Heathrow Airport respectively. This session forms part of an ongoing conversation between the EM-Power network and the ICHM on how histories of meteorology can inform efforts to transform practice in the present.

Categories
Conference Notes & Letters

Crisis Critiques

Workshop Report: “Climate & the Beginning of the Crisis Decades: Climate Research & Discourse During the 1970s,” Manchester, August 30, 2024

By Robert Naylor (University of Manchester and University of Cambridge), Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda (Technical University of Munich), and Ruth Morgan (Australian National University)

Due to the generous support of the International Commission for the History of Meteorology and the British Society for the History of Science, Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) was able to host a workshop exploring climate research and discourse during the crucial but often-neglected decade of the 1970s.

The 1970s have been argued to be a period of political, economic, scientific, and cultural transition. Daniel T. Rogers has described the 1970s as the beginning of an age of fracture, when the discursive, economic, and political landscape was torn apart and reformed. Eric Hobsbawm has written that the 1970s heralded “a world that lost its bearings and slid into instability and crisis.” It is during this decade that climate change narratives began to emerge into the political spotlight. As shown by scholars such as Spencer Weart and Joshua Howe, reasons for this increase in status include the rising influence of the environmentalist movement, neo-Malthusian fears of population explosion supposedly accentuated by adverse climatic effects on crop yields, and (controversially) the usefulness of climate change arguments for the nuclear power lobby during a time of energy and oil crisis.

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Online Seminar

Webinar: Sharing Scientists Stories

A Conversation with Meteorologist Biographers

We would like to draw members attention to this upcoming webinar organized by colleagues at the American Meteorological Society. Taking place via Zoom on Thursday 17th October 2024 at 19:00 ET (16:00 PT), the webinar will feature Jonathan E. Martin, Sean Potter, and Jim Fleming. More information and the registration link follows.

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Publications Resources

Two new books on the history of meteorology in China

By Zhenghong Chen

As the author of ten works on the history of meteorology in China in recent years, I would like to introduce you to two new titles.

A General History of Meteorological Science and Technology, China Meteorological Press, 2020.

The first book is A General History of Meteorological Science and Technology, consisting of two volumes, which received funding from the China National Publication Foundation and was published by the China Meteorological Press in 2020. This work may be the first general history of meteorological science and technology in the world, elaborating on the development and important content of meteorological science and technology over the past five thousand years, and proposing many important academic viewpoints, which has been praised by several Chinese Academics. Although published in Chinese, many universities and libraries in China have already collected this work of over 800 pages and hundreds of images, which can also be found at the Library of Congress in the United States.

The second book, written in English, is China’s Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Program-History and Philosophy, which was published by Springer Switzerland in 2021. This book offers an overview of modern science and technological development in China in a historical context, explains the Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Program (MLSTP) in the People’s Republic of China, and reflects upon China’s scientific and technological development and the history of the MLSTP in order to better understanding the advancement of science and technology in China and the world.

China’s Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Program-History and Philosophy (Springer, 2021)

Please do check out these titles and share (if relevant) among your own networks.

If you have any questions about either title, please reach out directly to Professor Chen.

Categories
Conference

Climate & the Beginning of the Crisis Decades

A one-day workshop that seeks to generate critical transdisciplinary engagement around climate research and discourse in the 1970s

Friday, 30 August 2024, 9-5pm
CHSTM Seminar Room: Simon 2.57 [maps and travel]

Organisers: Robert Naylor, Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda, Ruth Morgan

Please register here to attend in person
Please register here to attend online

Open to a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this workshop concerns the resonances of climate-based narratives and the growth of climate research during the long decade of the 1970s. The 1970s have been acknowledged as a period of political, economic, scientific, and cultural transition. Daniel T. Rogers has described the 1970s as the beginning of an age of fracture, when the discursive, economic, and political landscape was torn apart and reformed. Eric Hobsbawm has written that the decade heralded “a world that lost its bearings and slid into instability and crisis.” It is during this time of crisis that climate change narratives began to emerge into the political spotlight. As shown by scholars such as Spencer Weart and Joshua Howe, reasons for this increase in status include, as a few examples, the rising influence of the environmentalist movement, neo-Malthusian fears of population explosion supposedly accentuated by adverse climatic effects on crop yields, and (controversially) the usefulness of climate change arguments for the nuclear power lobby during a time of energy and oil crisis.

Continue reading “Climate & the Beginning of the Crisis Decades”
Categories
Conference Opportunities

Insular weathers, global atmospheres: Exploring the aerial histories of islands

Atmospheric Humanities Conference II

1-3 November 2024

Historical and Popular Art Museum of Aegina, Greece

Small island countries in the Caribbean and the Pacific and Indian Ocean have always been exposed to extreme weather, but the last decades have made it clear that they are also the biggest future victims of climate change. However, islands are also key sites in the history of science. Much weather and climate knowledge derives from island sites. When European and North American countries started launching weather balloons around 1900 to measure the upper atmosphere, next to ships, islands formed key launching sites. Islands were ideal places to measure the interaction of the global atmosphere, the land and the ocean. The Keeling curve was the result of decades of accurate and continuous measurements at Mauna Loa observatory on Hawaii. Moreover, islands have also became important meteorological metaphors: think about ‘heat islands’ in urban cities, where microclimates create islands where before there were none.

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Categories
Notes & Letters

The 6th Conference on the History of Chinese Meteorological Science and Technology

Nanjing City, China, 20-23 October 2023

By Zhenghong Chen, ICHM Vice-President and China Regional Representative

The 6th Conference on the History of Chinese Meteorological Science and Technology was successfully held in Nanjing City, China in October 2023. This conference was organized by Professor Zhenghong Chen, Vice-President of ICHM and Regional Representative of China, and co-hosted by the China Meteorological Administration Training Centre (CMATC), the Committee for the History of China Meteorological Science and Technology, and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST). Under the background of addressing global climate change, the theme of the conference was “Research on Meteorological History and Communication of Meteorological Culture.” The conference promoted the dissemination of the history of meteorological technology and culture in Chinese universities and across diverse disciplines.

Group photo of conference participants

Professor Li Beiqun, President of NUIST, Professor Sun Xiaochun, President of the Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology, Professor Xu Xiaofeng, Former Deputy Administrator of China Meteorological Administration, and President of the China Meteorological Service Association, Professor Yu Yubin, President of the CMATC, and Professor Zhenghong Chen, as Vice-President and China Regional Representative of ICHM, opened the conference.

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Categories
Opportunities Publications

Call for Papers: ‘Connecting Oceanic Asia’

GIF of NORTHERN ARC (China/Pakistan/etc) destinations: 2014-03-08 2330-0200 UTC infrared animation providing an overview of potential northwest destinations. This is for 7-10 hours after takeoff. Bright white cloud indicates cold (typically high) cloud forms, and dark gray delineates warm (i.e. low) cloud types. Lat/long graticule is at 10-degree intervals.
Source: http://www.weathergraphics.com/malaysia/

For a Special Issue of our journal History of Meteorology edited by Dr. Xiao Liu and Dr Zhenwu Qiu

We’re looking for contributors for an exciting special issue of our journal History of Meteorology titled, “Connecting Oceanic Asia: Production and Application of Meteorological Knowledge”. We are after exciting original papers which focus on any aspect of how modern meteorological knowledge was produced under the influence of regional interactions in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.

The collection is being edited by HoM Editorial Collective member, Dr Xiao (Shawn) Liu (Tsinghua University) and his colleague Dr Zhenwu Qiu. Papers can be up to 10,000 words, including citations, see the full style guide and information for more. All papers must be in English, however, we can provide extra copy-editing support for any authors for whom English is a second language. Abstract should be submitted by 10th December and we would expect the selected contributors to provide their draft paper by 15th March 2024 (however, there is some flexibility on this timeline).

We already have several contributors lined up for the special issue, but are seeking another 2 – 3 authors to come on board as contributors. If you are interested in contributing to this special issue or have any questions please reach out to the editors directly. To propose a contribution please send an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a brief C.V. to the below email addresses.

Contact Information:

Dr. Xiao (Shawn) LIU (xliu128@163.com)

Dr. Zhenwu QIU (qiuzhenwu1994@gmail.com).

Abstract Submission Deadline: 10th December, 2023 (The selected contributors would be expected to provide their draft paper by 15th March 2024)

Please do share this announcement with any relevant colleagues and networks.