Contributions and perspectives from geography to the study of climate

Abstract

Geographers have played an important and sometimes controversial role in the study of climate during the 20 th century. This review traces the historical contributions of geographical scholarship to the study of climate in two primary areas: statistical, descriptive climatology and research in climate and society. It draws out the specifically geographical nature of climatological work in the first part of the 20 th century, looking at the role of maps, classifications and historical statistics in describing and potentially explaining climatic cycles, patterns and processes. Geographers were keen to demonstrate the broader linkages between climate and the physical environment and humankind, such that applications of climatological expertise were crucial to economic development, imperialism and local scales, particularly the urban scale. This led geographers into insightful interdisciplinary applications, but also rather more awkward themes such as climatic determinism.The review draws out both the positive and negative aspects of geographer's contribution to understandings of climate. IntroductionClimate has rarely been far from the core of geographical enquiry, yet studies of climate have had a sometimes controversial role within geography as a discipline. Frequently shamed for climatic determinism, the spectre of characters like Griffith Taylor and Ellsworth Huntington cast a shadow across geographical contributions to work on climate and society 1 . Even attempts at researching climate systems and processes have had a variegated history as geography has competed with other disciplines, particularly atmospheric physics, for credibility and value. Whether in constructing a classification of the world's climatological regions, using past climate cycles for weather prediction or attempting to explain society's (racial, economic, cultural) relationship with climate, geographers have nonetheless created insights and developed ways of thinking that are still relevant and inspire contemporary research on climate change.Despite the conviction of (some) geographers in their mission to place geographical knowledge at the heart of academic enterprise with claims such as that "Ever since the dimmest antiquity the spirit of man has felt the need for geographical i.e. earth-describing, knowledge" 2 (Reference 2, p1.); if we fast-forward to the 1960s and 1970s, such an ambition appeared to be in crisis. Geography textbooks became replete with disclaimers about the stale nature of a purely descriptive, regional climatology 3 . This was particularly unfortunate since, as the eminent geographer and climatologist Gordon Manley suggested, climatology had become the next big field of research after having for so long been "something we took for granted as a rather depressing part of school geography" 4 (Reference 4, p360). It is the purpose of this review paper to outline geography's contributions to understanding climate through the 20 th century, incorporating the disconcerting (climatic determinism) and the perceived ol...

Percy Crowe: a forgotten pioneer quantitative geographer and climatologist

“…Within a decade, the growing interest in climate change stimulated a wealth of inter-disciplinary scholarship in which geographers played a substantial role (Thornes and Randalls, 2014). Randalls (2017: 5) reviews this shift, after presenting descriptive climatology – with no reference to Crowe – as:…a soft, descriptive topic and with limited scientific content, a view that secured (and was reinforced by) its placement within geography, the descriptive science. The location of climatology within geography significantly shaped and potentially tarnished the reputation of climatology due in particular to the propensity of geographers to also focus on cultural aspects in the spirit of Huntingtonian environmental determinism.…”

Bridging the divide between human and physical geography: Potential avenues for collaborative research on climate modeling

“…Beyond being themselves producers of climate science, geographers have also critically examined the production and application of climate science while foregrounding questions of justice (Randalls, ). Numerous scholars drawing on feminist and postcolonial traditions have critiqued the narrow, Western‐based, and normative understanding of what constitutes climate knowledge.…”

“…Geographers (among others) have called for the pluralization of climate knowledge and an appreciation of the alternative ways of knowing climate that are routinely marginalized in dominant climate discourse. More specifically, geographers have highlighted the value of climate research and policy that “embraces a cultural approach to climate as well as a scientific one” (Randalls, , p. 11; Adger, Barnett, Brown, Marshall, & O'brien, ; Mahony & Hulme, ). In a similar effort, Thornes and McGregor () call for a cultural turn in climatology: “The study of the processes of, and the interactions and feedbacks between, the physical and human components of the climate system at a variety of temporal and spatial scales” (p. 178), the possibilities of which have been recently explored by Tadaki et al () but have yet to be operationalized.…”

“…This is reflected in the fault line running through many departments across Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the relatively sparse collaboration between human and physical geographers, and their participation in distinct journals and conferences (Johnston, ). This has been traced back to the ontological separation of society and nature (Kwan, ), as well as the discipline's early, disastrous forays into environmental determinism (Randalls, ).…”

A Pioneering Use of Early Computers in Weather and Mortality Research: Ellsworth Huntington’s Work with New York Life Insurance Companies in the 1920s

“…His biographer concluded that "Probably no twentieth-century American geographer stood forward so prominently as the representative of the aggregate knowledge of his age" (Martin 1973, 253). While his work was widely critiqued at the time (Fleming 1998), his ideas continue to have resonance in contemporary climate change debates (Livingstone 2020;McGregor 2004;Randalls 2017).…”