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Conference

Workshop: Climate Change and the Humanities

(Cross post from H-Environment, via the Climate History Network)

On the 17th October 2013, the Centre for Social and Political Thought and the Centre for World Environmental History at Sussex University will be hosting a joint one-day workshop on how the humanities and social sciences have engaged with issues around climate change. Within the last two decades, discussions around climate change have expanded from the natural sciences to include the social sciences and humanities. It is now clear that climate change has political, economic and social consequences. However, until now academic discussions on the topic have focused primarily on policy implementation and the consequences of such actions. Furthermore, the historical dimensions to the debate have been severely neglected. Therefore, with this in mind, the aim of the one-day workshop will be to explore different approaches to the understanding of the climate change phenomenon with a view to further enhancing the inter-disciplinary approach to the subject. Thus, this workshop will provide an opportunity for, among others, social theorists, environmental activists, environmental historians and intellectual historians to come together to exchange ideas about how to understand the ‘climate change phenomenon’.

For further information please e-mail Alex Elliot (aje28@sussex.ac.uk) or James Cullis (J.Cullis@sussex.ac.uk)

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Resources

Japan Climate Data Project

(Cross post from the Climate History Network)

In 2013, researchers from Seikei University, Teikyo University, and Tokyo Metropolitan University created the new Japan Climate Data Project.  This collaboration aims to recover and catalog Japan’s extensive historical climate records–including weather diaries and phenological observations–as well as early instrumental measurements.  The data section is still in progress (as of 8/2013) but should eventually contain extensive digitized records and later English translations of data.  In the meantime, the site contains a bibliography of publications based on the collections.

For more, see http://climatehistorynetwork.com/2013/08/28/japan-climate-data-project/.

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Resources

International Society for Historical Climatology and Climate History

(Cross post from the Climate History Network)

Last week in Munich,  the International Society for Historical Climatology and Climate History was formally registered and held its first official board meeting during the European Society for Environmental History biennial conference.  The new society also inducted its first honorary members: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Christian Pfister, and Geoffrey Parker.  The board discussed links with journals, a publication series, and a projected conference for 2014.  The society will open formal membership soon.  For now, climatehistorynetwork.com will host the society’s webpage and announcements.

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Conference

The roles of climate models: epistemic, ethical and socio-political perspectives

(Cross post from the Climate History Network)

IPO Building, Room 0.11, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands

31st Oct – 1st Nov 2013.

ABSTRACT:

Climate models influence our understanding of climate change, its causes and its future. They are a central technology of climate science. But they are also sources of information for far-reaching policy decisions, sites of multidisciplinary integration, products of distributed epistemic labor and much more. As a consequence, climate models are of significant interest to scholars in philosophy, history of science, and science and technology studies. This workshop will bring together well-regarded scholars in these fields along with established climate scientists to explore the epistemic, ethical and socio-political roles that climate models play, their interactions and implications.

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Fellowships

2 Postdocs from Aarhus University

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

Centre for Science Studies

Department of Physics and Astronomy

 

As part of the research project “Shaping Cultures of Prediction: Knowledge, Authority, and the Construction of Climate Change” funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research (Humanities).

The project “Shaping Cultures of Prediction” examines the emergence of climate modeling as a culture of prediction in the formative period between ca. 1960 and 1985. It aims at investigating 1) how climate modeling emerged from a competition between different knowledge claims and epistemic standards to attain hegemonic status, and 2) how the use of climates models shifted from heuristic research instrument to application as a predictive tool for long-term climate prediction. See also the project website.

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Conference

Workshop Report: Colonialism and Climate History

On June 6-7, 2013, Georgetown University’s Mortara Center for International Studies hosted the workshop “Colonialism and Climate History,” organized by John McNeill, Franz Mauelshagen, Eleonora Rohland, and Jean-François Mouhot.  The presenters, both historians and geographers, explored perceptions, reconstructions, impacts, and adaptations to climate, climate change, and extreme weather in the colonial context.  Coverage ranged from the early modern period to the Cold War; and while most presentations focused on the Americas, two papers also examined case studies in East Africa and Indochina.

Click here to download a full list of presenters and topics.

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Fellowships Opportunities

2013-2014 American Geophysical Union Graduate Fellowship in the History of Science

The American Geophysical Union invites applications for a $5000 fellowship in the history of science to a doctoral student completing a dissertation in the history of the geophysical sciences, which include topics related to atmospheric sciences, biogeosciences, geodesy, geomagnetism and paleomagnetism, hydrology, ocean sciences, planetary sciences, seismology, space physics, aeronomy, tectonophysics, volocanology, geochemistry, and petrology. The fellowship must be used during the year following the start of the 2013 fall semester/quarter.

 

The goal of the fellowship is to assist doctoral students in the history of the geophysical sciences with the costs of travel to obtain archival/research materials needed to complete the dissertation.

 

Eligibility Criteria
Applicants must be U.S. citizens or hold permanent resident status, and must be pursuing a degree at a U.S. institution.
To apply for the travel grant, students must be doctoral candidates (i.e., have passed all comprehensive exams — ABD) in good standing and completing a dissertation on a history of geophysics topic. Candidates must submit the following:
• a cover letter with vita
• scanned transcripts from undergraduate and graduate institutions
• a detailed description of the dissertation topic and proposed research plan (10 typed pages maximum)
• three letters of recommendation, one of which must be from the dissertation director

 

Application Procedures
Electronic packets are preferred. Please send cover letter, vita, scanned copies of transcripts, and topic description as e-mail attachments to HistoryofGeophysics@agu.org. Recommenders should send letters via e-mail attachment to the same address.

 

Questions?
Contact Paul Cooper at HistoryofGeophysics@agu.org

 

Applicants are responsible for getting all materials in by the 15 August deadline.

AGU encourages applications from women, minorities, and students with disabilities who are traditionally underrepresented in the geophysical sciences.

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Opportunities

AMS History Symposium Call for Papers

The theme for the 2014 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting is “Extreme Weather—Climate and the Built Environment: New perspectives, opportunities, and tools.” Herein, we broadly define weather and climate extreme events to include, but not be limited to, severe storms, tornados, tropical cyclones, floods, winter storms, drought, temperature extremes, derechos, aircraft turbulence, wildfires, extreme solar activity, and ocean-land responses (e.g. storm surges, landslides, debris flows). Our society is a “built environment,” increasingly connected by cyber, energy, water, transportation, health, social, and other infrastructures—one that interacts with the natural environment through ecosystem functions supplied by wetlands, barrier islands, etc. The sustainability of this built environment and stewardship of our natural ecosystems are clearly related to quality of life. The theme is designed to explore the aforementioned “focal point” combining scientific inquiry, technological advances, societal implications, and public awareness through the lens of past, current, and future extreme weather and climate events.
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Conference

Talking Weather

27th August 2013
Lowther Room, RGS-IBG, Kensington Gore, London

 

Contemporary debates over the ‘imminent’ climate change threat coupled with the fixation on the apparent acceleration in anthropogenic global warming, have obscured a long, complex and dynamic cultural history of public engagement with climate and the  distinctive meaning that climate holds, and has held in the past, for different places and people at a range of scales.  Recent scholarship, however, has highlighted that one way to ‘re-culture’ climate discourses is to explore “…local weather and… the relationships between weather and local physical objects and cultural practices” (Hulme, 2008).

 

The weather is and has been woven into our experiences of modern life in many ways. Particular social norms and cultural contexts, however, shape the way in which weather is conceptualised and experienced, which in turn, together with the knowledge of events in the recallable past, determines whether and how weather becomes inscribed into the social memory and cultural fabric of communities.

 

The purpose of ‘Talking Weather’ is to bring together individuals with an interest in weather study and cultural histories of the weather, to explore the ways in which people engage with and ascribe meanings to the weather and make sense of it. Specifically the event will provide a forum to discuss different methodologies and approaches that can be used to investigate and capture popular understanding of weather, weather memories and experiences.

 

Categories
Conference

Call for Papers: Food and Weather

This multidisciplinary colloquium aims at filling a gap in research by studying the numerous interdependences between weather conditions and human food. It leans on two networks: that of the IEHCA, which works on the history and the cultures of food, and that dedicated to representations of weather (Perception of climate network).

 

Yet, both research fields of food and meteorology train an “interscience” (Parrochia) which requires a holistic approach of a “total phenomenon” (Mauss). The human beings who are biological and social, try to establish, by collective standards, the interaction between individuals and their environment, between the inside and the outside, in an aim of control, forecast and protection.

 

Studying relationships between food and meteorology responds, today in highly developed western countries, to a social search for harmony with “Nature”. What about other places? The colloquium will hand over to other cultures. The themes aim to be registered both in the present time and in a historical perspective. The topic will not be the history of food or the history of climate but crossed views. The consequences of the global warming on foodstuffs, as well as past and present scarcities and famines associated with exceptional weather conditions, do not constitute the heart of the subject, because these themes have been and are still the object of numerous colloquiums.

 

Four axes will be explored: perceptions, rhythms, discourses, signs.