Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy

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Sara J. Grossman

Immeasurable Weather

Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy

Sara J. Grossman

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Hardback

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English

Duke University Press
01 November 2023

Meteorology & climatology

Series: Elements

In Immeasurable Weather Sara J. Grossman explores how environmental data collection has been central to the larger project of settler colonialism in the United States. She draws on an extensive archive of historical and meteorological data spanning two centuries to show how American scientific institutions used information about the weather to establish and reinforce the foundations of a white patriarchal settler society. Grossman outlines the relationship between climate data and state power in key moments in the history of American weather science, from the nineteenth-century public data-gathering practices of settler farmers and teachers and the automation of weather data during the Dust Bowl to the role of meteorological satellites in data science's integration into the militarized state. Throughout, Grossman shows that weather science reproduced the natural world as something to be measured, owned, and exploited. This data gathering, she contends, gave coherence to a national weather project and to a notion of the nation itself, demonstrating that weather science's impact cannot be reduced to a set of quantifiable phenomena.

By: Sara J. Grossman
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 508g
ISBN: 9781478020059
ISBN 10: 1478020059
Series: Elements
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 01 November 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: About American Weather 1 1. Dreaming Data: Locating Early Nineteenth-Century Weather Data 25 2. Gendering Data: The Women of the Smithsonian Meteorological Project 57 3. Data in the Sky: Scientific Kites, Settler Masculinity, and Quantifying the Air 87 4. Data’s Edge: Cleaning Data and Dust Bowl Crises 111 5. Ugly Data in the Age of Satellites and Extreme Weather 137 Epilogue: Data’s Inheritance 171 Notes 179 Bibliography 209 Index 229

Sara J. Grossman is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies on the Johanna Alderfer Harris and William H. Harris Professorship in Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College.

Reviews for Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy

In her analysis of the relationship between weather data and human experience, Sara J. Grossman's main point-all the data in the world won't save us-is stupendously timely and significant. Scholars of environmental history, of environmental humanities, and of the history of science will learn a great deal from this important book. -- Joyce E. Chaplin, author of * Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit * Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend. -- Sarah Ray, Professor, Cal Poly Humboldt