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Notes & Letters Opportunities Publications

Call for Contributions: A Sourcebook of Weather and Weathering

Diagram of meteorology displaying various atmospheric phenomena in a single illustration. The illustration includes a mountain, seashore, lighthouse, and weather elements: sunshine, a storm, a tornado, and a rainbow.
Meteorology: atmospheric effects. Coloured engraving by J. Emslie, 1846. Wellcome Collection 46556i.

By Lotta Leiwo (University of Helsinki), Rebekah Higgitt (National Museums Scotland), and Tamara Caulkins (Central Washington University)

Amidst mild coastal Norwegian winter weather in December 2024, a group of thirteen humanities researchers convened in Stavanger for a workshop on weather and weathering. The days offered sunshine, coastal fog, and mist—as well as fruitful academic discussions on studying weather and weathering. We gathered at the Greenhouse incubator library at the University of Stavanger for the workshop “Affect and Material Cultures of Weathering: Histories, Temporalities, and Spaces,” organized by MSCA postdoctoral researcher Animesh Chatterjee in collaboration with Melania Buns (the Greenhouse, University of Stavanger).

During the workshop, each of us presented our approaches to studying weather and weathering within the histories of science, medicine, and technology; environmental history; architectural and design history; and literary and cultural studies. The aim was to explore the linkages between affect, material cultures, climate, and weather from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

An introductory session of visual lighting talks, in which each participant spoke about one visual image, was especially illuminating and sparked the idea for our Sourcebook. This Sourcebook, which we are proposing as an open access publication, will encompass textual, visual, and material primary sources geared towards historians wanting to take more notice of the climate and weather in which their narratives emerge. The call for proposed entries will be open until September 4, 2026.

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Conference Notes & Letters

Tsinghua University Holds Workshop on the History of Meteorology

By Xiao Liu and Wenzhe Zhang (Tsinghua University)

On April 11, 2026, the Third Workshop on the History of Meteorology was held at Tsinghua University. Hosted by the Department of the History of Science at Tsinghua University and co-organized by the International Commission on the History of Meteorology, the workshop was themed “Meteorology, Climate, and Environment: Exploring the Future Path of Research in the History of Meteorology”. It aimed to gather early-career researchers, students, and distinguished scholars to discuss and explore key developments, methodologies, and themes in the history of meteorology in China.

ICHM’s President Robert Naylor, and Vice President, Zhenghong Chen delivered welcome remarks online. While the workshop organizer, Xiao Liu (Tsinghua University), gave an introduction to the history of meteorology.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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