Article ID: CBB341875825

Making Weather Vertical: Meteorology and the Temporalities of Infrastructural Atmospheres in New Zealand, Ca. 1920–1950 (2020)

unapi

In the decades after World War I, the development of aviation and meteorology became increasingly entangled, with the result that meteorology became a necessary part of the epistemic infrastructure of routine aviation. This paper explores the complex re-spatialisation of meteorological practice that occurred as the New Zealand Meteorological Service (NZMS) transformed its data collection, interpretation, and forecasting services to support New Zealand's aspirations for aviation prior to the Second World War. Crucial to this work was the transformation of meteorology's spatialities to incorporate a volumetric understanding of the upper atmosphere's turbulent dynamics. Making meteorology three-dimensional required profound conceptual and practical work to fashion new spaces of concern. This meant developing instruments and practices through which phenomena, such as high-altitude winds, could be recorded, mapped, and communicated. However, this spatial transformation was also simultaneously a temporal transformation framed by the demands of becoming infrastructural. New Zealand's meteorologists lobbied the government for the resources to synchronise atmospheric dynamism with the demands for increasingly quick and fine-grained forecasts. Making the atmosphere three-dimensional profoundly changed meteorology, but meteorology in New Zealand was only able to become infrastructural to the extent that it was able to integrate, and strategically mobilise, new forms of temporality into its emerging spaces of concern.

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Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg; Martin Mahony (2020) Introduction—up, down, Round and Round: Verticalities in the History of Science. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 595-611). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB341875825/

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Authors & Contributors
Straeten, Jonas van der
Jack Linzhou Xing
McCormack, Derek P.
Neil Clayton
Obertreis, Julia
José David Gómez-Urrego
Concepts
Meteorology
Atmosphere (Earth)
Science and technology, relationships
Aeronautics; aviation
Temporality
Infrastructure
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
18th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Tropics
Central Asia
Americas
Ecuador
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Berlin Atmospheric Program
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