Climatic Histories and Climate Science in Imperial Contexts
Summary
Imperial administrations and their scientific networks profoundly shaped early climate knowledge by mobilising colonial archives, natural history collections and meteorological observations across vast territories. From the systematic temperature and precipitation records gathered at outposts in the tropics to the development of conceptual models of biospheric regulation in metropolitan centres, these endeavours underpinned emerging theories of climate variability and change. Climatologists operating within imperial structures negotiated local knowledge and European scientific norms, producing distinctive environmental imaginaries that linked resource management, public health and infrastructure planning to prevailing political priorities. As climate science matured during the twentieth century, its global institutions retained legacies of imperial practice in both methodological conventions and the unequal distribution of research capacity. Recent historiographical work has sought to reveal how concepts of habitability, acclimatisation and climatic determinism were deployed to justify colonial expansion and to frame post-colonial challenges. By tracing the evolution of early climate data networks, the interplay between local and international actors and the shaping of modern earth system models, this field of study illuminates the global significance of past power relations for contemporary debates about climate justice, adaptation and governance.
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Climatic Histories and Climate Science in Imperial Contexts publication trend
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Technical terms
Imperial contexts: Historical settings in which colonial powers organised scientific research and resource governance across their territories.
Habitability: The capacity of an environment to support human life, often influenced by climate, infrastructure and technology.
Environmental imaginary: Conceptual frameworks and shared images by which societies understand and represent their natural surroundings.
References
- Mikhail Budyko's (1920–2001) contributions to Global Climate Science: from heat balances to climate change and global ecology. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (2016).
- Histories of habitability from the oikoumene to the Anthropocene. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change (2023).
- Embracing the cordillera: Luis Carranza Ayarza and the development of environmental imaginaries in late-nineteenth-century Peru. História Ciências Saúde-Manguinhos (2023).
- Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (2020).
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