From Climatology to Climate Science in the Twentieth Century

Heymann, Matthias; Achermann, Dania

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_38

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The construction and integration of submodels under conditions of complexity and limited computer power required compromise, approximation, and workaround strategies along with extended efforts of tweaking and tuning (Edwards, , ch. 13; Heymann & Achermann, ).…”

Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Now, fast computation and numerical modeling had become the next big thing. The Humboldtian holism of classical climatology—assembling empirical knowledge from all relevant disciplines—was elevated to the level of model holism in Earth system science (Heymann & Achermann, ; Uhrqvist, ).…”

Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the modeling paradigm “has served to marginalize other, less reductionist ways of understanding global climate change,” by largely excluding, for example, historical and sociological perspectives and local and indigenous types of knowledge from climate research and discourse (Cohen et al, , p. 345). The global grasp of models, along with its limited spatial resolution and reduced attention for local detail and complexity, made Earth system science “a microcosm of the globalization syndrome” (Clifford, , p. 359) and an agent “of globalizing reductionism” (Heymann & Achermann, ).…”

Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Epistemology and Politics in Earth System Modeling: Historical Perspectives

Heymann

Dalmedico

2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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This commentary provides a critical account of Earth system modeling history. It argues that Earth system modeling is not simply a domain of science but also a form of politics. Earth system science carries the ideas and social and cultural norms of the peculiar historical eras in which it emerged and grew. Systems thinking and a strong belief in the power of modeling have its roots in the early Cold War era. When the Cold War era gave way to a time characterized by economic stagnation, social unrest, and rising environmentalism, climate science absorbed the new cultural trend of environmental concern, while retaining an optimism and enthusiasm in the modeling paradigm. The post‐1990s era reveals particularly clearly the political power that climate scientists unleashed. The modeling paradigm assumed hegemonic status, seized economic and social processes, and created not only scientific knowledge but also conceptions of political management of the Earth. The modeling paradigm, once a scientific strategy largely in the hands of scientists, has turned into a political agent in its own right, beyond the full control of the scientific community.

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Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Post‐1990s: Earth System Modeling and The Climatization Of Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Epistemology and Politics in Earth System Modeling: Historical Perspectives

Heymann

Dalmedico

2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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“…Therefore, the provenance of the data matters for the technical procedure of obtaining best estimates. Scale is another important issue (see also Heymann & Achermann, ). For instance, since the 1853 Brussels conference, marine climate observations have been a global undertaking to serve global seafaring, whereas other measurements such as those of evapotranspiration (Thornthwaite, ) typically had a more regional emphasis such as agriculture (eventually developing into subdisciplines with a corresponding spatial focus such as microclimatology or topoclimatology).…”

Section: Why Is It a Problem?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate data empathy

Brönnimann

Wintzer

2018

WIREs Climate Change

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In the era of climate services, which provide globally complete data products in a ready‐to‐use form, the context of climate data is in danger of being neglected or forgotten. However, the historical and present‐day context imprinted on this climate data is important in its own right. The data depend on political, economic and technological factors, as we show with a range of data coverage maps. We term awareness of and sensitivity to this context‐dependence “climate data empathy,” and argue that context should be seen as a source of information to be communicated along with the data. Such context not only provides additional information about the data products, but may help in designing communication strategies and contribute more generally to raising awareness of the contingency of environmental data. Decision making should thus make use of both climate data and its context. This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Technological Aspects and Ideas

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“…Such cultural views possibly further differ by whether they include the anthroposphere in the climate system or see the climate system as separate from the human domain. There are classical, mostly descriptive views on climates from the ancient Greeks to 20th century geography (e.g., Heymann, 2010;Hulme et al, 2009;Hulme, 2016;Heymann and Achermann, 2018; Version of doi:10.5194/gc-2018-11 that was rejected after one iteration of major revisions and submitted to EarthArXiv. 1 Mauelshagen, 2018;Fleming and Jankovic, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Even Is Climate?

Bothe¹

2018

Preprint

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Although the concept of climate is easy to understand, there is not any uncontroversial definition of it. Most definitions fall back to the simple formulation that `climate is the statistics of weather'. Recent attempts at a definition called versions of this saying vague. Climate is policy-relevant, and discussions on climate and climate change benefit from clarity on the topic. Beyond the policy relevance a definition should also be valid for scientific purposes and for individual views. It has to account for a general concept and individual instances of climate. Here, I try to highlight why the flexibility and the immediacy of the colloquial definition fit the topic. This defence shifts the lack of a clear definition towards the term `weather' and the time-scales separating weather and climate.

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From Climatology to Climate Science in the Twentieth Century

Cited by 10 publications

References 57 publications

Epistemology and Politics in Earth System Modeling: Historical Perspectives

Epistemology and Politics in Earth System Modeling: Historical Perspectives

Climate data empathy

What Even Is Climate?

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