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Opportunities

Talking Weather event

We are holding a one-day event on ‘Talking Weather’, as part of our AHRC funded project ‘Weather Walks, Weather Talks’, and would like to invite early career researchers interested in the cultural spaces of climate, to participate in discussions. 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. We will also be reflecting on the life and work of climatologist and geographer Gordon Manley whose archives have formed the basis of our research for the broader project.

 

Speakers include John Kettley (freelance broadcaster and weather consultant), Stephen Burt (author of The Weather Observer’s Handbook), Trevor Harley (University of Dundee and ‘psychometeorologist’), Cerys Jones (University of Aberystwyth) and Lorna Hughes (University of Wales), who will reflect on their experiences in engagement through the broadcast media, in print, and online, alongside others with direct connections to Gordon Manley and his work; John Adamson (Moor House National Nature Reserve), and Frank Oldfield (Emeritus Professor, University of Liverpool).

 

The event will be held at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), in London, on Tuesday 27th August 2013, between 10:00am and 4:30pm. It is timed just ahead of the RGS-IBG Annual Conference which begins on Wednesday 28th August.

Categories
Publications

Online seminar available

Jim Fleming, “At the Cutting Edge: Harry Wexler and the Emergence of Atmospheric Science,” Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRAHS) online seminar, Fort Collins, CO, Thursday, May 9, 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MqY0y1rt8&feature=youtu.be

“This presentation tells the story of the emergence of the new interdisciplinary field of atmospheric science in the twentieth century as shaped by the influences of multiple technologies. It does so from the perspective of MIT-trained meteorologist Harry Wexler (1911-1962), an American student of the Bergen School of air mass analysis, head of research in the US Weather Bureau, and one of the most influential meteorologists of the twentieth century, whose career spanned the middle decades of the twentieth century…By telling the story through Wexler’s eyes, a more personal story can be told.”

Categories
Conference

INHIGEO: International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences

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.

Categories
Conference

Race, alterity and affect workshop

A workshop entitled “Race, alterity and affect: rethinking climate change-induced migration and displacement” will take place from 18 to 19 June at Durham University in England. From the H-Net Announcement: “the aim of this workshop is to bring debates about climate change and migration broadly defined into dialogue with contemporary critical race theory and postcolonial theory. Recent interventions have suggested that racialisation in the context of debates about climate change and migration unfolds through at least three interrelated tropes: naturalisation, the loss of political status, and ambiguity. This work also argues that given their historiographic emphasis, theories of the postcolonial on their own appear to be insufficient for properly theorising the alterity of the climate change migrant. This is because climate change and migration discourse is written in the future-conditional tense. In contrast, others have embraced theories of the postcolonial to interpret issues of climate change and mobility. Thus one of the aims of this workshop is to consider how critical race theory and theories of the postcolonial might be usefully reinterpreted to address the future-conditionality of climate change and migration discourse.”

 

To register, contact Ellie Whittles (e.c.whittles@durham.ac.uk).

 

Organisers: Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) and Katherine E. Russo  (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale)

Partners: COST Action IS1101 Climate change and migration; Institute for Advanced Studies (Durham University); Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale

Categories
Conference

Tagung zur „Thüringischen Sintflut“ von 1613 in Apolda

(This German conference is about a flood in Apolda, Thuringia in 1613 and will be held 24-25 May 2013.)

 

Am 29. Mai 1613 wurden Teile Thüringens, darunter der Raum Weimar/ Apolda, von schweren Unwettern und Überschwemmungen heimgesucht. Das auch als „Thüringische Sintflut“ bezeichnete Ereignis forderte Hunderte Todesopfer und verursachte beispielsweise an der Ilm und Magdel enorme Sachschäden. Im Rahmen einer Tagung soll an den 400. Jahrestag dieser Katastrophe erinnert werden. Die Veranstaltung findet am 24. und 25. Mai 2013 in Apolda statt.

 

Categories
Climate History Network

ASEH Climate History sessions

(cross post from the Climate History Network)

 

At the American Society for Environmental History in Toronto, there will be a number of paper and panels on climate including:

  • Climate history breakfast to discuss initiatives in this growing field of environmental history.  It will meet on the morning of Thursday, April 4, 7:15am in the Jasper Room.
  • “East Meets West: Middle Eastern Environments and Western Eyes” (Panel 4-E), chaired by Sam White of Oberlin College. Paper presentations will be “East, West, and American Conversationism” by David Schorr of Tel Aviv University; “The Science of Sand: The East in Nineteenth Century European Climatology” by Philipp Lehmann of Harvard University; and “Getting the Goat: Disturbing Creatures and Attempts to Change the East” by Tamar Novick of Univeristy of Pennsylvania.
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Climate History Network Resources

Teaching resource: 100 Views of Climate Change

(cross post from Climate History Network)

100 Views of Climate Change is a website for climate-change education and outreach.  This site was recently reorganized and includes annotations and links to videos, podcasts, books, articles, essays, and websites that convey high-quality information in clear and appealing ways to non-specialist adults, including college-level students, their teachers, and the interested public. The range is multidisciplinary, ranging from climate science to ecology, agriculture to ethics, communication to policy, economics to energy.

Categories
Climate History Network

Study: Volcanic Eruptions Diminished Recent Warming

(cross-post from Climate History Network)

Average global temperatures fluctuate in response to many different influences, and while some of these “forcings” are now affected by humans, others are shaped entirely by natural causes. Articles on this website have considered whether sulfur released into the atmosphere by volcanic eruptions stimulated the prolonged cooling of the so-called Little Ice Age in the centuries before 1850. Deposited in the stratosphere, volcanic sulfur dioxide interacts with other chemicals to form sulfuric acid and water, which in turn reflects solar radiation. Other articles on the site have introduced research revealing that the reflective properties of man made aerosol pollution in the twentieth century likely sheltered swaths of North America and, later, parts of China from the influence of global warming. Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a new study by lead author Ryan Neely explores how these very different influences have recently interacted with the most important forcing agent of our time: the rapid rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases caused by human activity.

Categories
Climate History Network

New Study: Multiproxy Reconstruction Offers Independent Confirmation of Global Warming

(cross-post from Climate History Network)

The article D.M. Anderson et al., “Global Warming in an Independent Record of the Past 130 Years,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, uses an index of 173 temperature-sensitive proxies to reconstruct global temperatures going back to 1880, and a smaller index of 67 proxies to extend the record back to 1730.  The results strongly mirror those of the instrumental record, with clear indications of accelerating warming in the 20th century.  The study notes that “The upward trend appears to begin in the early 19th century but the year-to-year variability is large and the 1730-1929 trend is small.”

Of course, for climate historians the study also serves as a nice confirmation of the validity of proxies in historical climate reconstruction.  The broad Paleo Index used in the study actually shows much stronger correlation with the instrumental record than single, local proxies tend to do.

Categories
Conference

ICHM at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine

At the iCHSTM conference this summer, 22-28 July, ICHM will have a day of sessions around “Gaining it / losing it/ regaining it(?) Knowledge production in climate science, status anxiety, and authority across disciplines”. For more information, please see the program guide online. According to the provisional programme, it is currently planned to take place Friday, July 26. For more information about iCHSTM, please visit the conference website at http://ichstm2013.com/.