Article ID: CBB001553016

Unpuzzling American Climate: New World Experience and the Foundations of a New Science (2015)

unapi

In the early exploration and colonization of the Americas, Europeans encountered unfamiliar climates that challenged received ideas from classical geography. This experience drove innovative efforts to understand and explain patterns of weather and seasons in the New World. A close examination of three climatic puzzles (the habitability of the tropics, debates on the likelihood of a Northwest Passage, and the unexpectedly harsh weather in the first North American colonies) illustrates how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century observers made three intellectual breakthroughs: conceiving of climates as a distinct subject of inquiry, crossing the hitherto-separated disciplines of geography and meteorology, and developing new theories regarding the influence of prevailing winds on patterns of weather and seasons. While unquantified and unsystematic, these novel approaches promoted a new understanding of climates critical to the emergence of climate science. This study offers new insights into the foundations of climatology and the role of the New World in early modern science.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001553016/

Similar Citations

Chapter Golinski, Jan; (2008)
American Climate and the Civilization of Nature

Book Sigrist, René; Candaux, Jean-Daniel; (2001)
H.-B. de Saussure (1740-1799): Un Regard sur la Terre

Article Martin Mahony; (2016)
For an empire of ‘all types of climate’: Meteorology as an imperial science

Article Molina García, Juan Alberto; (2013)
El sistema de cuestionarios y relaciones geográficas en el mundo hispánico de la Ilustración. Un procedimiento para obtener y difundir información climática

Article Simon Naylor; Neil Macdonald; James P. Bowen; Georgina Endfield; (2022)
Extreme weather, school logbooks and social vulnerability: The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Book Fiona Williamson; (2025)
Imperial Weather: Meteorology, Science, and the Environment in Colonial Malaya

Book Giulia Iannuzzi; (2022)
Geografie del tempo: Viaggiatori europei tra i popoli nativi nel Nord America del Settecento

Article White, Sam; (2015)
“Shewing the difference betweene their conjuration, and our invocation on the name of God for rayne”: Weather, Prayer, and Magic in Early American Encounters

Article Degroot, Dagomar; (2014)
“Never Such Weather Known in These Seas”: Climatic Fluctuations and the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century, 1652--1674

Article Adriaan MJ De Kraker; (2005)
Reconstruction of Storm Frequency in the North Sea Area of the Preindustrial Period, 1400–1625 and the Connection with Reconstructed Time Series of Temperatures

Article Wheeler, Dennis; (2005)
British Naval Logbooks From the Late Seventeenth Century: New Climatic Information from Old Sources

Book Jankovic, Vladimir; (2000)
Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820

Article Dario Camuffo; Antonio della Valle; Francesca Becherini; (2023)
Tre serie meteorologiche storiche: Firenze, Bologna e Padova

Article Macdonald, Alan R.; McCallum, John; (2013)
The Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Climate from Scottish Ecclesiastical Records

Book Brückner, Martin; (2006)
The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity

Book Schuchard, Margret; (2007)
Bernhard Varenius, 1622--1650

Chapter Blom, Frans R. E.; (2010)
Picturing New Netherland and New York: Dutch-Anglo Transfer of New World Information

Article Vogel, Brant; (2011)
The Letter from Dublin: Climate Change, Colonialism, and the Royal Society in the Seventeenth Century

Article Pleasant, Jane Mt; (2011)
The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Book Carey, Daniel; (2012)
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe

Authors & Contributors
Blom, Frans R. E.
Brückner, Martin
Camuffo, Dario
Candaux, Jean-Daniel
Carey, Daniel
Endfield, Georgina H.
Journals
Environment and History
History of Meteorology
Journal of Historical Geography
Agricultural History
Llull: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Publishers
Ashgate
Brill
Georg Editeur
Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by University of North Carolina Press
University of Chicago Press
University of Pittsburgh Press
Concepts
Climate and climatology
Meteorology
Geography
Colonialism
Weather
Earth sciences
People
Hakluyt, Richard
Saussure, Horace Bénédict de
Varen, Bernhard
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
19th century
16th century
20th century, early
15th century
Places
North America
England
Great Britain
Scotland
North Sea
Africa
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Navy
Royal Society of London
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment