Experiencing and Responding to Everyday Weather in Darwin, Australia: The Important Role of Tolerance

Abstract

Climates are changing, yet the everyday implications for societies and cultures are unclear. Until recently, weather and climate (change) have been largely represented quantitatively and discussed at broad spatial and social scales. Qualitative weather research is helping to reconnect weather with its diverse local meanings and to explain how climate change may alter future representational and behavioral understands of weather (herein called “weather-relations”) in the hope of furthering climate change action. Responding to the need for greater research into weather-relations, particularly in industrialized urban areas, this paper examines the role of weather in everyday life in tropical Darwin, Australia. It identifies a willingness among participants to stay “weather-connected” despite challenging weather conditions and access to air conditioning. This willingness is driven by desires to remain acclimatized in order to enhance positive weather sensations, retain outdoor lifestyles, and reduce financial and environmental costs associated with resource-intensive technologies. In delving into weather adjustment strategies that facilitate weather-connectedness along with possible climate change implications, greater potential for weather-relations research is recognized. By drawing attention to weather experiences and understandings alongside resource efficient weather responses, this paper uncovered a substantial capacity among participants to respond sustainably to environmental change. These capacities are the outcome of adjustment practices relating to food, clothing, laundering, physical and outdoor activities, and domestic comfort and a previously unrecognized coping strategy—expressions of tolerance. Findings suggest that by recognizing and fostering existing adjustment capabilities of societies and cultures and the local values that afford their reproduction, communities would be better placed to adapt to future climate change.

Negotiating nature's weather worlds in the context of life with sight impairment

“…How, for example, might people with sight impairment cope, endure and adapt within areas that experience heavy snowfall throughout the winter months, or within areas where surface quality/composition and vegetation growth are particularly susceptible to changing weather patterns? What can be learnt from the vernacular adjustment strategies (De Vet, 2017) developed by such individuals for those experiencing similar changes in local weather patterns as a result of anthropogenic climate change? How might such changes intersect with cultural variations in weather relations?…”

“…While the seasonsand the various elemental shifts that come with seasonal changeare often celebrated as a reminder of "the timelessness of nature and the human condition" (Vannini et al, 2012, p. 374), our analysis highlights the need to balance such romantic ideals with a recognition of the range of challenges that also emerge in trying to liveand to live wellwith diverse weather elements of varying intensities and durations through the seasons (De Vet, 2017). By highlighting the varied ways in which shifting weather patterns influence people's capacity to sense and act from moment to moment, day to day and seasonally, we call for greater attention to such ephemeral phenomena in shaping people's experiences within the broader literatures around well-being, impairment, disability and nature.…”

“…This has been touched on to some extent within studies exploring the mobility strategies and challenges faced by older adults and youths with physical impairments during snow-laden Canadian winters (Lindsay & Yantzi, 2014;Morales et al, 2018). As noted by Finlay (2018), for example, despite the isolation and myriad challenges of negotiating Canada's treacherous white space in winter, many older adults express pride in their levels of toughness and ability to endure this weather, incorporating such weather tolerance (De Vet, 2017) into their sense of self and identity. These everyday adaptations and embodied improvisations to both anticipated and unanticipated weather patterns remain relatively understudied and under-theorised (Strengers & Maller, 2017) within subfields of geography that seek to understand how and why people come to experience a sense of well-being or otherwise through particular place encounters (Bell et al, 2018;Conradson, 2005).…”

Thermal Comfort in Urban Spaces

“…changing of clothing in different conditions. For example, research has highlighted the seasonal variation of clothing (Aljawabra andNikolopoulou 2010, 2018;de Vet 2017;Leng et al 2020), and as a direct function of temperature (Nikolopoulou et al 2001;Nikolopoulou 2004;Nikolopoulou and Lykoudis 2006;Yahia and Johansson 2013;Aljawabra and Nikolopoulou 2018;Lai et al 2020).…”

“…Other adaptive actions have included consumption of hot or cold drinks to increase or decrease one's metabolic heat according to the weather (Nikolopoulou 2004;Nikolopoulou and Lykoudis 2006;de Vet 2017).…”