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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.

Poster in Chinese for the Third Workshop on the History of Meteorology at Tsinghua University.

The workshop opened with two keynote presentations.

The first keynote, by Associate Professor Hao Wang (Shanghai University) was a talk entitled “An Etymologic Study on the Word ‘Qixiang Xue’: Based on Western-Chinese Bilingual Dictionaries (1822–1922)”. In which, he traced the etymology of the Chinese term Qixiang Xue (meteorology), revealing the long, multi-channel circulation and negotiation of knowledge between Europe, China, and Japan. His talk was an excellent reminder of the interconnectedness of histories of science, reminding all present to always consider the history of cross-cultural contact from a global perspective.

In the second keynote, Associate Professor Zuoyan Cao (China Agricultural University) presented, “Famine Relief and the New Woman: A Study of Textile Production for Disaster Relief in the Taihang Base Areas during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression”. He argued that during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Communist Party of China promoted gender equality and women’s emancipation through productive labor. By encouraging women to participate in spinning, weaving, and farming, the regime alleviated labor shortages and mitigated famine. These practices challenged traditional norms that confined women to domestic roles and assigned them inferior social status, helping to shape “new women” for a new society.

A photograph of the attendees at the Third Workshop on the History of Meteorology at Tsinghua University.

Selected Presentations

The workshop accepted open submissions, receiving more than 60 abstracts, of which 11 presenters and 10 papers were selected for presentation. Each selected paper was assigned a designated discussant.

  1. PhD Candidate, Jiaqi Wang (Yale University) presented “The Sky as the Earth’s Face: ‘Earthquake Clouds’ and China’s Universalist Environmental Outlook, 1966–1988”. As a discussant, postgraduate student Xiaoping Xue (Columbia University) commended the study for its sharp problem awareness, particularly its dialogue with the historiography of mass science and focus on earthquake rumors and social panic. She also raised questions about the specificity of seismology in this era and what the case reveals about the interplay among knowledge production, governance, and environmental perception in Mao?era China.
  2. PhD Candidate, Pengshan Tang (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) presented “Imagining ‘Shi qi (Dampness)’: Discourse, Culture, and the Body in 20th Century and Contemporary Chinese Contexts”. This study explored the emergence, transformation, and contemporary circulation of ‘shi qi’ as a bodily discourse in Chinese society. Discussant, PhD Candidate Qing Guo (Nankai University) commented that the paper illuminated the status of traditional environmental knowledge in modern China. He cautioned against the “curse of theory,” urging that grounded, lived experience should not be reduced to the footnotes of grand theories. He also emphasized that deepening the analysis of the online examples will be critical to strengthening the study’s scholarly impact.
  3. Postgraduate student, Qijia Shen (Renmin University of China) presented “Storms in the Far East: Knowledge, Power and Nationalism in Modern China’s Weather Forecasting, 1873–1937”. In which, she argued that the establishment and evolution of China’s modern weather?forecasting system between 1873 and 1937 was intertwined with the popularization of scientific knowledge, great?power competition for meteorological hegemony, the rise of Chinese national consciousness, and local scholars’ efforts to reclaim meteorological sovereignty.
  4. Associate Professor, Xi Liu (Xi’an Jiaotong?Liverpool University) presented a co?authored paper titled, “Realist Concerns and Narrative Types in Contemporary Chinese Climate Fiction”. In which, she outlined three representative themes of climate change in Chinese cli?fi narratives: flooding, cooling, and warming. Discussant Associate Research Fellow, Yanli Chu (Beijing Meteorological Society) observed that by constructing extreme fictional scenarios, cli?fi allows readers to rehearse crises from a safe distance, prompting reflection on collective action, just transition, and ecological civilization. It is not merely a cautionary tale but an experimental space for exploring how humanity can transcend divisions and pursue resilient coexistence.
  5. PhD Candidate, Xiaoyi Hang (Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences; Beijing University of Chinese Medicine) presented “Multi?Scale Impacts of Historical Climate Change on Infectious Diseases from the Holistic Perspective of ‘Correspondence between Heaven and Human’”. He argued that historical epidemic outbreaks in China were not caused by isolated environmental hazards but by cascading interactions between climatic anomalies (e.g., extreme cold and drought) and vulnerabilities in social systems, with famine serving as a critical amplifying factor.
  6. Postdoctoral Fellow, Wei Liu (Fudan University) presented, “Reconstruction and Mechanism of the Compound Extreme Precipitation Event in Northern China in 1654”. She concluded that: 1. The event combined persistent rainfall and short?duration extreme downpours, showing intra?seasonal superposition of distinct precipitation types. 2. Under a double La Niña and strong East Asian summer monsoon, remote typhoon activity contributed to moisture transport, analogous to the extreme July 2021 rainfall in Henan. Discussant, Lecturer, Zhilong Fang (Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology) noted that comparing the 1654 event with the 2012 extreme rainstorm in Beijing is highly illuminating. Given climatic differences in North China during the late Ming and early Qing, he suggested a systematic comparison between the 1654 event and other representative extreme precipitation episodes of that period to more fully uncover patterns and driving mechanisms.
  7. PhD Candidate, Hongbo Hao (Beijing Normal University) presented “A Study of Agricultural Meteorological Divination in the Han and Tang Dynasties: From Qin–Han Bamboo and Wooden Slips to Essentials of the Four Seasons”. His research focuses on the timing and subjects of agricultural meteorological divination in the Han–Tang period. It further links the divinatory logic of wind, clouds, qi, and rain to the theories of yin–yang, five phases, and Eight Trigrams (guaqi), aiming to reconstruct how meteorological divination shaped agricultural practice in the Han–Tang era. Discussant, Lecturer, Hongjun Liu (Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, CAS) commented that the reporter had a solid grasp of historical sources on agricultural meteorological prognostication during the Han and Tang dynasties, with reasonable categorization and a fair degree of persuasiveness. One suggestion was to avoid linear, single-narrative interpretations when analyzing texts from different sources, such as divination books, agricultural treatises, and official histories.
  8. Postdoctoral Researcher, Ziang Dong (Hokkaido University) presented, “A Land of Eternal Spring? Meteorological Surveys and Discursive Formation in Modern Yunnan across France, Japan, and China”. This study examines the construction of climatic perceptions of modern Yunnan through meteorological surveys by French, Japanese, and Chinese actors from the mid?19th Century to the 1930s. It argues that the label of Yunnan as a place of “eternal spring” is not a neutral climatic description, but a discourse produced via scientific measurement, print media, and affective politics. Situating these processes within the global expansion of modern science, the paper showed how French, Japanese, and Chinese actors competed over meteorological narratives, shaping modern climatic imaginaries of Yunnan. Discussant, Lecturer, Zhenwu Qiu (Nanjing Normal University) offered three suggestions: 1. The concept of zhangli (miasma?related illness) as a socially constructed climatic idea should be contextualized within the long?term historical interactions between Han Chinese and ethnic minority groups in premodern China. 2. Analysis of how France, Japan, and China produced knowledge of Yunnan as featuring “eternal spring” should address cross?national intersections and knowledge exchanges. 3. The trope of Yunnan’s “perpetual spring” persists today; while seemingly complimentary, it obscures the region’s climatic diversity.
  9. PhD Candidates, Liying Chen (Jilin University) and Shanglin Liu (University of Manchester) jointly presented, “Observing Celestial Phenomena to Survey Local Lands: Meteorological Observation, Agricultural Experiments of the South Manchuria Railway Company and Japanese Colonialism”. In which, they argued that the South Manchuria Railway Company established numerous agricultural experiment stations across Northeast China to conduct agricultural trials and agro?meteorological observations. These practices embodied the colonial logic of Japan’s long?term rule over Northeast China. Discussant, Dr. Qian Chen (Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine) suggested that research on agro?meteorological observatories run by the South Manchuria Railway should analyze crop impacts on socioeconomic development to clarify their role in early 20th?century agricultural production.
  10. Postgraduate student, Jinfeng Liao (Shanghai Normal University) presented the research paper titled “The Seizure and Utilization of Japan‘s Military Meteorological Intelligence in China during the War of Resistance against Japan”. This paper pointed out that existing research has largely overlooked several core issues: how meteorological factors influenced Japanese military operations, how Japan acquired military meteorological intelligence on China, and how the Japanese military applied such intelligence during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Following all presentations, the workshop concluded with a roundtable discussion that brought together all presenters and discussants for collective dialogue.

Professor Gang Fu (Ocean University of China), who is also the deputy Director-General of the Professional Committee of Meteorological Science and Technology History, emphasized that disciplinary development depends on precise conceptualization. Although modern meteorology has a century-long history, it was once not fully recognized as a formal discipline due to ambiguous core concepts, highlighting the essential role of clear definitions. He also noted that the integration of artificial intelligence and human expertise is pivotal: advanced AI tools have overcome language barriers in accessing foreign literature, creating improved conditions for research. He recommended incorporating the history of meteorology into atmospheric science curricula through dedicated courses. In summary, the history of meteorology carries great academic significance, and contemporary meteorological research will inevitably become the disciplinary history of the future.

Senior Engineer (Professor Level) Gaizhen Zhang (China Meteorological Administration Training Center), who is also the Secretary-General of the Committee on the History of Meteorological Science and Technology at the Chinese Society for the History of Science, observed that research themes and methodologies at both the Seventh National Symposium on the History of Meteorological Science and Technology (hosted by the China Meteorological Administration) and this workshop reflect the current state and future trends of meteorological history research in China, including colonialism, global history, and knowledge production and circulation. She called for stronger collaboration between meteorological historians and natural sciences researchers, as well as among scholars in history, cultural studies, philosophy, and other humanities and social science fields. She argued that by combining strengths in scientific accuracy, archival research, and theoretical reflection, the field can produce higher-quality scholarship. The committee pledged to provide robust support for members and researchers nationwide.

Associate Professor, Beibei Li (Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology) commented that the Tsinghua Workshop on the History of Meteorology has become a leading academic forum, offering an invaluable platform for rigorous peer review and scholarly dialogue. It is well-positioned to serve as a cornerstone for continued innovation and advancement in this dynamic field.

Regarding the function and role of research on the history of meteorology, Wang Bangzhong, who retired from the Department of China Meteorological Administration, responded to the question raised by the media for workshop. He said that looking both back into the past and ahead into the future will help the scientific and technical payoffs in terms of meteorological understanding contribute to improvements in the lives of the public. To close, workshop organizer, Xiao Liu delivered a concluding remark, thanking all presenters and reviewers for their participation. He called on researchers in the history of meteorology to further strengthen cooperation and academic exchange.

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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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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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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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Notes & Letters

Cultivating Transdisciplinarity: Report from the Workshop Climate, Food & Famine

By Robert Naylor, Eleanor Shaw, and Yixuan Li

Manchester, UK, 14 April 2023

Due to ICHM’s generous support, Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) was able to host the one-day workshop Climate, Food & Famine. The event was attended by scholars from around the world, and generated productive cross-disciplinary discussion on the complex relationship between food systems and atmosphere.

The event was opened by a short speech from CHSTM’s director Carsten Timmermann, who highlighted the Centre’s long history of a critical approach to the history of science, technology, and medicine. The workshop then proceeded with the first panel, Climate and the Causes of Hunger and Malnutrition, which highlighted the complexities of attributing any breakdown of social systems to specific causes such a climate change.

The first speaker was Tolulope Esther Fadeyi of the University of Basel, who highlighted the role of poor governance in causing failures in maternal nutrition in the urban slum of Iwaya, Lagos. Much of the literature on the experiences of contemporary slum dwellers in Lagos attributes poor living conditions, nutrition and maternal health outcomes to climatic change, but for Fadeyi, such systemic failures often had their roots in colonial modes of land division and usage.

The next speaker was Heli Huhtamaa of the University of Bern, who discussed the spatial patterns of harvest failures and famine mortality in pre-industrial Finland. Here Huhtamaa highlighted the value and potential of an interdisciplinary approach, using geographical information systems (GIS) not only to analyse her datasets in an innovative way, but also to communicate the significance of such datasets effectively to a non-specialist audience. One of the striking features of Huhtamaa’s talk was her acknowledgement of the agency of those suffering from hunger as well their traditional coping strategies. Hungry people move quite considerable distances in response to environmental stressors, meaning that the distribution of hunger does not often reflect the distribution of adverse climate conditions or harvest failures, but rather lack of proximity to viable travel routes.

The panel was closed by Richard Warren, also of the University of Bern, who discussed the climate and human impacts of the 1831 and 1835 volcanic eruptions in India. With a magisterial use of flowcharts, Warren emphasised complex feedback mechanisms produced by policy decisions of the British East India Company that contributed, often quite decisively, to the famines that accompanied such eruptions.

In general, the first panel highlighted how governance is an essential ingredient for understanding climate impacts, an angle that is often suppressed when international organisations conceptualise climate change as a “scientific” issue.

After a tasty lunch provided by the University of Manchester’s catering provider, the workshop moved on to the second panel, which was entitled Changing Agriculture, Changing Tastes. The panel was opened by Theo Tomking of the University of York, who discussed climatological attributions in soil maps of the mid-twentieth century. The colonial perception of the challenge of producing food in the tropics adopted climatic conditions as an explanation over the course of the mid-twentieth century, often centring on the presence of red lateritic soil. Tomking showed that earlier soil maps did not support this climatic attribution thesis, and instead emphasised the diversity and nuance of varying soil types across tropics. Tomking argued that this complexity was in fact obfuscated over time.

Next Julia McClure from the University of Glasgow took attendees on a romp through hundreds of years of Mayan Central American history. McClure explored the connection between Indigenous agro-ecological systems and cosmological belief systems that connected communities to cycles of time and meaning, including beliefs about climate. The imposition of commercial agricultural systems by colonial forces challenged and in many cases extinguished indigenous modes of production, prioritising monocultures and cash crops that have contributed to climate change.

Finally, Anaïs Mansouri from the University of Geneva explored the World Food Programme’s approach to the relationship between climate and food and famine from the 1970s. Mansouri argued that the WFP, unlike many other UN agencies, did not discuss the relationship between the food shortages they were responding to and ideas of climatic change until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mansouri also argued that the political position of the WFP and its relationship to other UN agencies was responsible for this position, until wider societal discourses on climatic change prompted a distinct change in narrative.

Overall the second panel explored the perceived connections between agricultural and food supply practices and the climate, and rebuffed the notion that these connections have always been considered as causal and simple.

The final panel was called Moral and Political Perspectives on Climate and Food, and concerned conceptualisations of the atmosphere-governance relationship that often had an explicitly moral character. The panel was opened by Doreen Müller of Leiden University whose paper provided a rich visual representation of the moral responsibility for sufficient food believed to be held by the emperor in early modern Japan. Rice was rationalised as a moral and material link between people and the environment, and its distribution during times of hardship was seen as an essential feature of good governance. Müller argued that the climatic components of the moral economy of rice changed during the time of the Tenp? Era Famine (1833–39), as visual and textual narratives commemorating famine traced climate events and their relation to the human world in unprecedented detail.

Müller was followed by Semih Çelik of the University of Exeter, who examined the “Hungry [eighteen] Forties” in the Anatolian regions of the Ottoman Empire. Çelik examined official correspondence, newspapers, poetry, and private letters to explore the meanings attributed to the food scarcity in Anatolia. Governing parties and their newspapers minimised the hunger experienced, unable to reconcile the need to portray the empire as thriving and climatically blessed with the scarcity. The connection between famine and climate in locations outside the Ottoman Empire, such as Ireland, was increasingly recognised by these groups however. Outside elite circles, social memory provided an interpretation of extreme climatic events that acknowledged famine and engaged with discourses of world ending and hopelessness. The resulting bread riots and social unrest, for Çelik, demonstrates the gulf between official and popular cosmologies of climate, scarcity, and hunger.

The workshop was brought to a close by Baihui Duan of the University of Oxford, who explored the Little Ice Age theory that has been used to explain natural disasters and famines in Asia in the seventeenth century. Like Çelik, Duan explored the discrepancy between official and popular perceptions of climate and the perceived correlation between long-term drought and poor harvests. Within official circles, the widely held Confucian belief in the connection between the moral conduct of the king and the presence of extreme climatic events and natural disasters restricted their attributions and actions to those which would ensure political stability. Ultimately Duan called into question the existing literature on the Little Ice Age in Korea due to its failure to engage with the underlying political discourses of benevolence within official accounts.

Discussions of a variety of moral discourses in the past help us understand how climate change might act as a moral concept in the twenty-first century. Whether we feel guilty about buying a second-hand petrol car, condemn frequent flyers, or protest at climate conferences, the moral perspectives of climate discourse deserve continued attention.

Discussion both during and after the workshop was rich. David Schultz of Manchester’s Centre for Atmospheric Science gave the meteorologist’s perspective, providing insights into the possible mechanisms behind many of the events that were discussed. Jon Roberts of the University of Leeds drew comparisons between Tomking’s work on soils and his own work on hookworm prevalence in colonial contexts, informing the workshop that colonial officers hypothesised that hookworm prevalence could be related to soil types. This highlighted that such colonial discussions of environmental determinism went well beyond climate. Alex Hibberts of the University of Durham asked some insightful questions of what caused our current science-based conceptualisation of climate to arise. The workshop made clear how the climate–society relationship has been conceptualised in so many different ways over the centuries. What are the assumptions that underpin the current dominant mode of climate discourse? Only by paying attention to the past can we understand the depths of questions such as this.

We would like to reiterate our thanks to ICHM for providing core funding for the workshop. We would also like to express our thanks to CHSTM and the Northern Environmental History Network for their support.

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Notes & Letters

A History of the Wind

The front cover of Alain Corbin's book History of the Wind, featuring an illustration of a classical sailing ship.
A History of the Wind by Alain Corbin.

by Alain Corbin

With extreme-weather events becoming more common, we’re more conscious than ever of the destructive power of the wind. To watch hurricanes devastate coastal cities and tornados rip apart houses is to witness the full fury of nature’s vital force.

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Notes & Letters

Military applications and meteorological reputations: Franz Baur and the fate of long-range weather forecasting

A photo from 1941 of a horse struggling in the snow, being pulled by a soldier wielding a machine gun.
‘Horse in Winter’, 1941, Bundesarchiv. Source: Wikimedia Commons

By Rasmus Wiuff

An accompaniment to the article ‘Was Franz Baur’s infamous long-range weather forecast for the winter of 1941/42 on the Eastern Front really wrong?’ Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, January 2023

On 22 June 1941, Hitler began Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union with the aim of ending the campaign before winter. The soldiers therefore had no winter equipment, not even in the depots behind the front. The equipment, including guns, rifles and tanks, was not suitable for heavy frost and snow, in contrast to the Soviets’ equipment. In the first few months, the campaign went as planned for the Germans, but then came autumn with rain and mud, the time of year that the Germans call Schlammperiode (mud period) and the Russians more poetically refer to as rasputiza (slush). The Germans faced poor mobility and were stuck for four weeks.

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Conference Notes & Letters

Call for Papers: Climate, Food & Famine in History

Old combine harvester somewhere in the USA. – "This combine was in the same place the last time I photographed it on 1982. Not much has changed."
Author: Charles Knowles Source: Wikimedia ( Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

By Robert Naylor and Eleanor Shaw

Open to a range of time periods and disciplinary backgrounds, this workshop is concerned with the history of climate-orientated narratives in relation to food and famine. At a time of rebounding climate discourse, the use of climate-orientated narratives as explanatory devices for food shortages and famine has come under increased scrutiny. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attracted criticism in 2007 when he attributed the Dafur conflict to climate change-induced food insecurity. More recently, in 2015, Barack Obama controversially used the Syrian civil war as an example to frame climate change as a security problem: ‘It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East. So, increasingly, our military and our combatant commands, our services […] will need to factor climate change into plans and operations.’ In 2021 the World Food Programme website claimed that families ‘are stuck in a cycle of conflict, climate shocks and rising levels of hunger’ in relation to the ongoing famine in South Sudan. This workshop aims to bring academics together to provide historical context for such claims.

Relevant work includes Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts, which argues, for example, that research into hypothetical sunspot-driven climatic changes was utilised to help excuse British authorities who oversaw the Great Famine in India. Philip Slavin (2019) has presented a complex picture of the British famine of 1314-17, where agriculturalists had to face unrelenting taxes and forced food sales alongside an inclement climate. Critiques of climate attribution theses have a long history, with meteorologist Rolando Garcia’s 1981 work Nature Pleads Not Guilty disputing the climate attribution thesis of food insecurity in the 1970s. More recent work by Jan Selby, Omar Dahi, Christiane Fröhlich, and Mike Hulme has interrogated the climate attribution thesis of the Syrian conflict, arguing that policymakers should exercise greater caution when drawing such links. Even more recently, Myanna Lahsen and Jesse Ribot (2022) argued that ‘climate-centric disaster framing can erase from view—and, thus, from policy agendas—the very socio-economic and political factors that most centrally cause vulnerability and suffering in weather extremes and disasters.’

Such discussions are rich, but often suffer from being siloed in isolated academic subjects and institutions. This workshop aims to bring together scholars across disciplines to critically examine powerful and controversial climate-based narratives around food insecurity that have long permeated public discourse.

This is an intimate 1-day event that seeks to assemble individuals with various research backgrounds (e.g. environmental history, HSTM, social sciences, atmospheric science) in an effort to generate critical transdisciplinary engagement around the intersection between climate, food, and famine in history.


April 14, 2023, 9:00-16:00 BST

Room 2.57 Simon Building, University of Manchester, UK

Deadline for abstracts (300 words): December 15, 2022



Registration information for non-presenting participants will be circulated at a later date.

Format: 20-minute presentation followed by 10-minutes of discussion at the end of each panel. 50-minute roundtable to finish proceedings.

Please send your submissions and any queries to Robert Naylor and Eleanor Shaw (conference organisers): climate.food.famine@gmail.com

A limited number of travel bursaries are available (with priority for early career researchers). Please email the above address for details. In the first instance this is an in-person event. However, if you wish to contribute but cannot travel please email the above address.

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Notes & Letters Seminar

14.7: Inquiry into Earth Atmospheres

Logo for the 14:7 initiative. A postcard of cumulo-stratus clouds, colour manipulated and flipped to portrait, with text overlaid

By Emery Jenson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

We’re excited to announce the launch of “14.7: Inquiry into Earth Atmospheres,” a new Borghesi-Mellon Public Humanities Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Our workshop provides a forum for scientists, social scientists, and humanists to develop new methods, terms, and analytical frames for inquiry into Earth’s atmosphere(s).

As a collective, we hope to deepen our investigation of Earth atmospheres to shed light on problems that no one of our disciplines can engage alone. We will investigate the practices by which corporate energy giants like Enron use climate data to commodify atmosphere and weather patterns. We will bring together insights of postcolonial and area studies with those of meteorology. We will engage meteorological research showing that basic atmospheric mechanisms like heating and cooling occur via different dynamics in the tropics and the poles. We will explore multiple intersecting planetary atmospheres that challenge what Kristen Simmons has called “settler atmospherics,” a monologic account of atmosphere manifest as monoculturalism. We hope you will join us.

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