Making Weather Vertical: Meteorology and the Temporalities of Infrastructural Atmospheres in New Zealand, Ca. 1920–1950 (2020)
Henry, Matthew (Author)
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 62
Issue: 4
Pages: 744-762
Publication date: 2020
Language: English
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.
...MoreArticle 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).
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