Please follow the link below for the CfP for a conference on “Changing climate change communication: A conference on the interactions between culture, society and language in the context of global warming”, to be held in Amsterdam on 21-22 July 2014.
Category: Conference
On December 3, 2013, the , the Meteorological Society of Cuba (SOMETCUBA) held the First National Meeting on History of Meteorology in Havana. Click here to read the meeting memoir (pdf).
Association of American Geographers (AAG), Annual Meeting
April 8-12th 2014 in Tampa, Florida.
Organized by Lars Böcker (Utrecht University) and Mario Cools (University of Liège)
Intuitively, weather plays an important role in everyday life. How often do we not expose ourselves to cold, heat, sun, rain, snow or wind, or do we refer to these same elements at the coffee table or when writing post cards from a holiday address. Recently, weather has also emerged as an important policy aspect, with climate change, urban microclimates, health, accessibility, livability and subsequent aims to reduce car mobility and promote healthy but weather-exposed transport modes and physical activities high on the agenda. Yet although the influence of weather on daily life has been pervasive and its societal relevance never more pronounced, current interdisciplinary scientific debate on how weather shapes everyday life still requires further research to complete the areas that are under-investigated and provide additional empirical evidence to support policy-making. We thus seek to organize a session (or sessions), which address(es) the role of weather in daily life in its broadest sense, including behavioral or psychological responses to weather by diverse societal groups in a diverse range of geographical, cultural and climate contexts. We welcome submissions that examine topics including but not limited to:
ICHM and CHSTM Workshop
Manchester 21 – 22 November
Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Organizers: Vladimir Jankovic (Manchester) and Samuel Randalls (UCL)
There has been relatively little historical and critical research on applied and commercial meteorology compared to that on academic research and weather forecasting. Through the twentieth century, however, commercial meteorology and industrial climatology became increasingly prominent, often attributed to a post-WW2 glut of available meteorologists and an emerging number of corporations exploring, for example, air pollution, emergencies and business interruption issues. Governments around the world have supported the development of an explicitly commercial meteorological sector to provide competition to public services in areas of weather forecasting and consultancy, although public organizations are still generally charged with collecting meteorological data and producing emergency forecasts.
(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)
(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.
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.
Categories
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
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.
39th Symposium, co-sponsored by the Geological Society of America
Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California
July 6 – 10, 2014
Conference Themes:
(1) Doing the History of the Earth Sciences: What, Why, and How?
and (2) California’s Place in the History of the Earth Sciences
In 1994, the Geological Society of America hosted the Penrose Conference, “From the Inside and the Outside: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of the Earth Sciences.” The focus of that meeting was on how practicing scientists (“insiders”) and professional historians (“outsiders”) approached research in our field. Twenty years later, it is fitting to ask where we stand presently on fundamental questions about scholarly inquiry into the development of the geosciences.