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Applied climatology: Doing the relational work of climate

Marc Tadaki, Jennifer Salmond and Richard Le Heron
Progress in Physical Geography published online 23 January 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0309133313517625
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 Article
Progress in Physical Geography
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Applied climatology: Doing The Author(s)
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DOI: 10.1177/0309133313517625
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Marc Tadaki
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Jennifer Salmond
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Richard Le Heron
University of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract
Applied climatology has long been a niche domain, straddling the intersection between the social and
natural sciences and populated largely by geographers explicitly interested in reframing human activities
around climate. As human-atmospheric relations become increasingly embedded within institutions of
governance, new narra- tives of and for applied climatology are emerging to champion particular
atmospheric objects, orientations, practices and institutions into positions of policy relevance and
investment priority. This paper attempts to understand these intersecting politics of climate and society
research by situating their emergence through three lenses of inquiry. First, we explore the historical
disciplinary work of application in geographical clima- tology, paying particular attention to how relevance
has been understood and practised. Second, we reassem- ble a missed disciplinary conversation about
ideology in applied geography, and link this to definitions and rationales for applied climatology. Third, we
explore five recent thematic engagements in applied climatology, to generate thinking about the institutions
and practices of assembling climate in new circles of application, policy and elsewhere. The applications
that climatologists choose to pursue and the ways in which they pur- sue them are deeply political
questions that reproduce decision-making logics, funding rationalities, notions of expertise and problem
framings. In conclusion, we argue that, rather than understanding climate and society as stable entities
with standard (e.g. quantitative) practices or modes of association, we might instead concern ourselves with
the practices of assembling human-atmospheric relations.

Keywords
applied climatology, applied geography, nature/culture, politics of knowledge, relevance

I Introduction action. The expansion of agricultural and tour-

The application of climate science to problems
of social choice has long been a thematic con-
cern in geography. In many ways and in differ-
ent times and places, climatological arguments
have been advanced to explain human
character and behaviour, the constitution of
societies, and the desirability of particular
pathways of social
ism industries, the design of buildings and cit-
ies, the health and happiness of human beings
Corresponding author:
Marc Tadaki, School of Environment, University of
Auckland, Private Bag 92019, New Zealand.
Email:
m.tadaki@gmail.com
 2 Progress in Physical Geography

these are all categories of human development and may not be as apolitical as they first appear.
that climatologists have applied themselves to For a field that has recently been
understanding and advancing. In some cases,
the application of climate science has even
become an industry in itself for instance,
fun- nelling billions of dollars through
private- sector insurance brokers in the form
of weather derivatives, as a way of linking and
distributing financial and climatological risk
(Changnon, 2005b; Randalls, 2010).
Applied climatology has often been storied
as a subdiscipline of geography that accepts its
framing categories, objectives and terms of ref-
erence from external subjects and interests,
such as agriculture, businesses and
governments. It is often perceived as linking
climate and social vari- ables for the benefit of
society, and is explicitly not the study of social
relations which enable or allocate such costs
and benefits. Applied clima- tologists can
therefore be employed to maximize profits for
industries, reduce economic costs for
governments, direct infrastructure provision,
and so on. In this sense, it has largely been
imagined as apolitical, where the politics of
the research process is set from the outside,
and climatologists are not held responsible for
distributive implica- tions of their research.
Curiously, despite rising climate conscious-
ness (Thompson and Perry, 1997) and related
investments by planners, publics and scientists,
there has been remarkably little public discus-
sion about the ontological, epistemological
and ethical foundations of applied
climatology (Hobbs, 1997; Thornes, 1981;
Thornes and McGregor, 2003). Few ask:
What is applied cli- matology? or What
should we apply climatol- ogy to, and whom
should we apply it for? Yet how
climatologists conceptualize climate and
society and their interrelation has
implications both for the types of research
undertaken and for the wider outcomes that
we might want to facil- itate. Similarly the
kinds of applications which are praised,
promoted and pursued have conse- quences
described as being in its golden age
(Changnon, 2005b; Legates, 2012), this is an
opportune time to build bridges and think
hard about what kind of work applied
climatology has done, is doing and might yet
do.
This paper is an effort to understand the pol-
itics of applied climatology, to examine
how applied climatologists have imagined
their agency in the production of
environmental out- comes, and how we
might think about agency differently.
Ultimately, such discussions are about
ontology what are the fundamental cate-
gories and causal relations that we accept
to exist, and go about practising through our
research? Are climate (or climatology) and
soci- ety separate things, the former of which
can be applied to the latter? In the context
of a renewed call for a cultural turn in
climatology (Tadaki et al., 2012), we examine
the ontologi- cal underpinnings of applied
climatology and its past and future role in
defining the nature/cul- ture divide, paying
attention to how climatolo- gists compose
and circulate environmental meanings and
ideas about action.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, we
pro- vide a situated historical review of
applied cli- matology, highlighting the ways
in which the field has become allied to
quantitative meth- odologies and sidestepping
disciplinary argu- ments about ontology by
virtue of its applied concern for human
emancipation from climate. Second, we
identify guiding ideologies which have
underpinned applied climatology and which
continue to position its work as funda-
mentally biophysical and thus immune from
responsibility for social structure. Third, we
explore some discursive and political work
being done through five recent research cate-
gories in applied climatology, emphasizing
how a politics of the biophysical which
separates nature and culture is no longer
tenable. We draw on the different categories to
illustrate the multiple ways in which research
might be seen as applied or relevant in diverse
climatological contexts. By considering the
field of applied
 Tadaki et al. 3
(19451980), and the golden age (1980 to
present).
climatology as shaped by emerging categories
of research objects and practices, we attempt
to open up thinking around the moral, institu-
tional and epistemological narratives to which
applied climatologists contribute through their
work. Finally, we conclude that, rather than
resuming an organizing ontology of climate
and society, we can develop reflexive
practices through understanding applied
climatology as proposing human-social
formations, what we refer to as doing the
relational work of climate.

IIWhat is applied climatology,

where did it come from, and
where is it going?
This section approaches the problematic of
applied climatology through a historical inter-
pretation of the development of discourses of
application in meteorology, climatology and
geography. In doing so, we document how
applied climatologists have imagined their
roles and responsibilities in the world, and
how the project of applied climatology has
come to be defined in relation to particular
social actors (and industries). We highlight
how arguments about relevance and issues
of environmental determinism caused applied
climatology to split from mainstream
climatology and geography, respectively, and
how subsequent developments fashioned a
downstream political orientation for the
field.
While we could not possibly provide a
com-
prehensive account of the fields
development, we draw out key moments of
historical insight which can allow us to see
where applied clima- tology has been and
where it has been going, and gain a sense of
why some ideas (such as a notional Marxist
climatology) did not go any further. For
heuristic purposes, it is broken into three
broad periods, corresponding to pre- 1945,
post-war emergence and consolidation

1 Early foundations of applied
climatology (pre-1945)
Climate has been viewed as a legitimate
object of study since antiquity (Fleming and
Jankovic, 2011; Heymann, 2010). By the end
of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
climatology as a field of study of the
average characteristics of the atmosphere
took root in the emerging discipline of
(physical) geography. During this period,
geographical study was dominated by the
proj- ect of spatial description (Castree,
2005). In cli- matology, this meant the
compilation of average weather elements,
documentation of climate change, regional
description of climates and the classification
of climate-vegetation relation- ships
(Aspinall, 2010; Skaggs, 2004). This work
laid the foundations for the emergence of
applied climatology within the discipline of
geo- graphy. By 1940 a mass of climate
knowledge had accumulated that would prove
foundational to applied pursuits, such as
crop-climate suit- ability, water resource
baselines and basic tenets of structural design
(Changnon, 2005a).
During this period, two other important
developments took place which determined the
shape and trajectory of applied climatology.
First, there was the separation of meteorology
(as a largely mathematical pursuit) from clima-
tology (a geographical pastime). Following the
formation in the 1920s of dynamic
meteorology and the realignment of
atmospheric inquiry towards the form of air
masses, fronts and physi- cal movements of
the atmosphere, meteorology came into its
own as a reductionist science based on the
mathematical formulation and prediction, and
weather forecasting began its life as an indus-
try. Meteorology was therefore largely the
domain of physicists, chemists and
mathemati- cians. This created a longitudinal
tension about the relative scientific status
and institutional ownership of climatology
and meteorology, which still continues to play
out (Carleton, 1999).
Second, during this period, from the founding
ideals of geography as an integrative social-
4 Progress in Physical Geography

environmental discipline sprang a now much- allowed to live, and propagate their species, and
maligned interest in environmental settle. If such a sur- vey is ever undertaken, and it
obviously should be
determinism (Skaggs, 2004). Such approaches
were not unique to geography and widely
reflected across scientific endeavour at the
time. Climatology followed suit and key
works by figures such as Ellsworth
Huntington and Ellen Churchill Semple
sought to position climate as determin- ing
social characteristics, essentially justifying
racial (white) superiority (Castree, 2005).
Huntington (1924), for instance, assembled
climate statistics and economic output data
to argue for an optimum ambient temperature
for human productivity, and through histori-
cal analogy tried to explain the advance of
Anglo-American civilizations. Responses to
this applied climatological determinism ran-
ged from silent support to overt indignation
(Kobayashi, 2010). Harlan Barrows, Carl
Sauer and other major figures in geography
proposed a range of solutions, from abandon-
ing the study of physical environmental pro-
cesses in the pursuit of human ecology, to
abandoning only the explanatory aspects of
phys- ical geography (Skaggs, 2004). There
was a clear sense of alienation of physical
geographers from questions of human-
environment relationships, which, some
suggest, has unnecessarily hindered the
development of applied climatology (Hare,
1966; Sewell et al., 1968; Skaggs, 2004).
In the context of these two rifts in
climatology
from meteorology and from human-
environment relationships it is worth
reflecting on the task that the 1944 President
of the Royal Meteorolo- gical Society D.
Brunt had imagined for what he saw as an
emerging human biometeorology. After
discussing a report called The Poor White
Problem in South Africa, Brunt sug- gested
that:

the Colonial Office should immediately make a

sur- vey of the whole of the British Empire, to
determine in which parts white people are to be
 undertaken at the earliest possible time, the
meteor- ologist should take part in the work
along with the medical man and the economist.
(Brunt, 1944: 7)
This project for an applied climatologist
was imagined as one of rational climatic
optimiza- tion of human dwelling through
mathematics and physics, and somehow
extracted from (or contributing positively
towards) racial, colonial and political
concerns. Was this to be the work of applied
climatology?
2 Post-war emergence of the
subdiscipline (19451980)
Like many fields in geography and
elsewhere, applied climatology was heavily
affected by the Second World War. However,
in applied clima- tology the influence was
much more formative and direct than
elsewhere. The war required meteorologists
and climatologists to predict weather
conditions for troops, ships and aircraft, and
to concern themselves with logistical flows
and patterns of operational activities (Jacobs,
1947). Some of the most prominent applied
cli- matologists of subsequent decades were in
fact involved in the war efforts (e.g.
Landsberg, 1958; Landsberg and Jacobs, 1951;
Lee, 1968; see also Skaggs, 2004). In a
seminal contribu- tion on applied climatology,
Landsberg and Jacobs (1951) famously
defined the field as the scientific analysis of
[a statistical collective of individual weather
conditions] in light of a use- ful application for
an operational purpose. This definition
proved durable over the rest of the century
(Hobbs, 1997; Mather, 1974), and has only
recently been revised by Changnon (2005b;
see below).
This budding notion of applied climatology
emerged at a time in geography where human
and physical geographers were making sharp
criticisms of regional descriptive approaches,
and were in favour of organizing the discipline
to search for universal environmental, spatial
and social laws (Leighly, 1955; Schaefer,
1953). It also developed in an era when a
Tadaki et al. 5
climate-effect models for a range of public and
private interests (e.g. agriculture, water supply,
number of new specialisms and subfields
formed around scales and kinds of emphasis as
climatologists concerned themselves with
more scientific-explanatory pursuits (Gregory,
2000; Skaggs, 2004). For example, data and
statistical climatology picked up steam as an
institutional project, and new organizations
were set up to col- lect, homogenize, quality-
control and analyse climatic data for a range of
purposes (Changnon, 2005a). Energy balance
climatology explored the energetic flows and
distributions across environments within the
atmospheric boundary layer. Building
physical principles into under- standings of
meso- and micro-scale environ- ments, these
studies developed conceptual tools advancing
(in particular) the applied fields of urban
climatology, land-surface climatology
(including agriculture) and physiological
clima- tology or biometeorology (Chang,
1968; Oke, 1978; Sellers, 1965). Climatic
change also began to emerge as a major
organizing research theme, not only in the
context of historical change and current
vulnerabilities, but also as the prospect of
human-induced global warming started to
develop policy currency (Hare, 1966).
Alongside these developments in
geography,
synoptic and dynamic climatology continued
to develop within meteorology and, with the
aid of new computing technologies, made
tremendous strides in understanding and
modelling atmo- spheric dynamics across a
range of time and space scales (Barry and
Perry, 1973; Hare, 1955), opening up new
opportunities for weather forecasting and
global climate applica- tions, from modelling
the effects of acid rain and air pollution to
simulating nuclear fallout and global climate
change. The representation of complexity
made possible through these models allowed
increasing numbers of elements to be
modelled, from atmosphere-ocean and
atmosphere-vegetation coupling to human pol-
lution and land-cover change (Skaggs, 2004).
In other applied areas, the development of

infrastructure) allowed data to be
incorporated in real time to update decision-
making protocols and the formation of new
markets for meteoro- logical products
(Changnon, 2005a; Mason, 1970).
As climatologists went about their work in
these and other subfields, ongoing debates
around a geographical-climatological
impera- tive revealed continuing tensions
about the applied science and its
disciplinary function. In line with cementing
the process/quantitative revolution in
physical geography, Bryan (1944), Leighly
(1955) and Thornthwaite (1961) all resisted
a distinction between (geo- graphical)
climatology and meteorology, and advocated
strong mathematical and physics train- ing
for all physical geographers. Thornthwaite
(1961), however, argued that a compelling
new narrative for geographer-climatologists
could be found in topoclimatology, which
sought to understand the relationships
between land and atmosphere, resonating
with Hares (1966) process-based
environmental climatology. In contrast,
Stringer (1958) argued for the recogni- tion of
a geographical meteorology, which sought to
bridge the domains of local geographical cli-
matography and the universal physics of
upper air meteorology to explain the world as
observed. He argued that [t]he local
complexities of ele- ments and factors, so
irritating to the mathemati- cian, are after all
part of Nature, and important to man (p.
382). It was the role of geographers to keep
meteorologys feet on the ground (p. 382).
Such narratives became self-perpetuating as
students studied either physical sciences
(meteorology) or social sciences, and
geography remained one of the few disciplines
to straddle, albeit uncomfortably, the
nature/culture divide. Terjung (1976)
proposed a geographical clima- tology
developed around human-environment
concerns and operationalized through
systems theory using quantitative
mathematical models to combine physical and
human geography. While not directly named as
such, a geographical climatology was being
subtly carved out through
6 Progress in Physical Geography
all of these threads, which emphasized the
study of environmental (not just atmospheric)
pro- cesses related to understanding climatic
environ- ments (Hare, 1966).
For the most part, applied climatology
developed in this period settled quite readily
within the environmental climatology pros-
pect, producing seminal volumes combining
developments in climatological theory with
descriptive studies correlating climate vari-
ables and human activities (Hobbs, 1980;
Mather, 1974; Maunder, 1970; Oliver, 1973;
Smith, 1975). From the immediate post-war
period, significant work streams emerged
around physiological climatology (Lee, 1953,
1968) and economy-climate linkages (Curry,
1952; Maunder, 1970; Perry, 1971). Both
workstreams emphasized that humans could
(1) adopt technologies to insulate themselves
and their activities from climatic variability,
and (2) alter the nature of their activities to
minimize loss or disturbance. The aim of this
applied work was thus to emancipate human
action from the constraints of weather. As
Hare (1966) opined:
We are moving into an age in which adaptations to
natural environment will not consist merely of
countless individual submissions to or
overcomings of local circumstances; rather will
they be con- scious, planned endeavours . . .
perhaps involving large-scale deliberate alteration
or control. Control of environment is, of course,
already a massive real- ity for advanced societies.
We can expect the pro- cess to advance
continuously. Self-conscious awareness will in the
future be our mood in coming to terms with nature.
(Hare, 1966: 105)
The project of the applied climatology texts
from this time (and they are remarkably simi-
lar) are variously stated as an attempt to help
communities to live rationally within their
cli- matic environment (Mather, 1974: xii).
These authors view the atmosphere as a
resource to be exploited and optimized
through climatologi- cal method and
determination (Hobbs, 1980;
Maunder, 1970; Smith, 1975). Mather (1972:
138) asserts that [i]t is almost axiomatic that
the user himself does not understand the real
influence of climate and weather on his opera-
tion and that it is the job of the applied clima-
tologist to reframe the problem accordingly.
Thus the subjects of application were to a
large degree driven by self-selection of
users.
One further point is worth noting, which might
be thought of as a lost opportunity. Despite
signif- icant scholarship in human geography on
the rela- tionships between humans and their
environments
(e.g. Glacken, 1967; Tuan, 1977), the
ontological
foundations on which applied climate studies
were amassed remain largely underdetermined
and at the level of empirical correlation.
Physical approaches reduced atmospheric
processes to events, while human processes
producing social formations were locked off at
the level of industry inputs in short, research
from both sides of geo- graphy provided
shallow description but not any deep
biophysical or social explanation (Johnston,
1983; Thornes, 1983). But this was not the
pur- pose of applied climatology the aim was
not to explain social life, but the far more
pragmatic one of optimizing economic returns
and biophysical indicators. In this sense applied
climatology fol- lowed the developments in
meteorology more closely than geography.
Thus, applied climatol- ogy effectively
sidestepped arguments about ontology in
geography by asserting a politics of the
biophysical (to the exclusion of the social, cul-
tural and/or political) could anyone deny that
cli- mate influences agricultural production, or
that heat stresses human circulatory systems?
In the same way that approaches in cultural
ecology worked by reducing social processes
into mechan- ical responses to environmental
stimuli (Braun, 2004), the applied climatology
case makes no claim about its subjects beyond
the fact that they sustain biophysical economic
losses or benefits from certain events.
 However, even within applied an interest in thinking about the broader
climatology, there were some who showed narratives of their
Tadaki et al. 7
human geographer Harvey (1974) to reflect on
the ideology of applied climatology. He noted
work. In a simple but powerful example, Lee
(1969) reflected on a spectrum meanings in
bio- meteorological research:

At [one] end . . . is the study of the animals

response to environmental stresses simply as an
aca- demic pursuit, without regard to any possible
wider significance (and there are at least as good
reasons for choosing the milk cow as, let us say,
the sal- amander!). Slightly more liberal would be
a study for what it can contribute to establishing
general prin- ciples of environmental adaptation.
Human welfare, at least of a limited class, comes
into the picture if the objective of the study is
improved economies of ani- mal production.
Avowedly social implications are involved if the
investigator or his sponsor is con- cerned with
milk production in developing or agri- culturally
underprivileged countries. And from this it is only
a short distance to preoccupation with want as a
deterrent to peace. (Lee, 1969: 4)

Rather than understanding the applied

climatol- ogy project as one of simply
optimizing the resource, Lee dared to
wonder what kinds of effects such an
approach might produce in the world, and
whether or not it would ultimately advance
his vision of the field as facilitating the
reduction of social ills (Lee, 1969: 5). A
decade later, Hare (1979: 1174) identified a
swing of our profession towards taking respon-
sibility towards society very much more seri-
ously than we have in the past. In noting that
the inaugural World Climate Conference
would be a gathering of largely non
atmospheric scien- tists, he suggested that:

what matters about climate is not merely the ques-

tion of its predictability, which is obviously our
business; it is also the question of the impact it
makes upon the worlds peoples. And that is not
obviously within our competence. There is nothing
in our training that makes us experts in the art of
interpreting climatic impact. (Hare, 1979: 1173)

In line with both of these sentiments, Thornes

(1981) drew on a recent provocation from

the lack of philosophical discussion within
the atmospheric research community, and
com- plained that the positivist paradigm is
much too restrictive. It gives us no directive
as to how we should apply the knowledge
that its methods produce (Thornes, 1981:
430). While he admit- ted that the systems
frameworks for human- environment
interactions advanced by Kennedy and
Chorley (1971), Terjung (1976) and others
could be useful for climate researchers and
their publics, he wondered about the
conversations not being had:
What other paradigms might we consider to
stress the interactions between man and the
atmosphere? Do such approaches as Marxist
meteorology, humanistic climatology, radical
meteorology exist? What is a phenomenological
approach to the atmosphere? These are
questions that need asking and answering in the
next few years in order to utilize fully the value
of the atmosphere to man. (Thornes, 1981: 430)
Perhaps unfortunately, these questions were
not answered in the next few years, despite
the rise of political ecology within
geography, which developed new questions
about the work of environmental science in
the practice of politi- cal power (Braun,
2004). Instead, applied climatology largely
proceeded along a politics of the biophysical,
developing numerical and quantitative
approaches for systems-based for- mulations
of climate adaptation, while explor- ing
society only insomuch as deriving new
mechanisms relating to understanding the cli-
mate effect (Warrick and Riebsame, 1981).
3 The golden age (1980 to present)
Since the string of major texts on applied
clima- tology published in the 1970s and early
1980s, there has been only one major
compilation of work published (Thompson
and Perry, 1997; but see Ebi et al., 2009).
Legates (2012) and Perry (1995) cite the rise
of interest in global cli- mate change as both
a boon and a bane for applied climatology
on the one hand, interest (and investment)
has never been higher for
8 Progress in Physical Geography

fields concerned with climate-sensitive activi- number of major events in the 1970s and
ties, but, on the other hand, the scope and 1980s and followed by major national and
mandate for the practice of such studies has international investments in
never been tighter. Ongoing developments in
weather forecasting, regional and global cli-
mate modelling, and the new field of climate
impact assessment (Kates et al., 1985) have
brought Terjungs (1976) notional physical-
human process-response systems approach
into a full-blown institutional paradigm
around a new industry of climate-change
impacts.
Despite the shift in emphasis, however,
cli- mate applications have never been more
embedded into human organizations than at
pres- ent, and the industries with strong
histories of cli- mate application agriculture,
urban design, tourism have developed their
own communities and structures within and
external to applied cli- matology to deal with
their concerns. For exam- ple, weather
derivatives and crop insurance provide one
way for agriculturalists to mitigate risks of a
poor harvest, or for energy and water
companies to deal with drought; civil
engineers occupy the domains of
infrastructure and con- struction, and
architects the domain of design. In many
ways, applied climatologist roles have become
portfolios within organizations. The lack of
textbooks in applied climatology may attest as
much to the decentring nature of the enterprise
as any loss of definitional or practical
coherence. This expansion caused Changnon
(2005b: 915) to outline a wider definition of
the field: applied climatology describes,
defines, interprets, and explains the
relationships between climate condi- tions and
countless weather-sensitive activities.
Changnon (2005a) describes this period as
applied climatologys golden age, on
account of: (1) increasing human reliance on
agricul- ture and other climate-sensitive
industries, particularly with major population
growth and globalizing economic flows; (2)
increasing recognition of human vulnerability
to climate extremes, highlighted by a
climate data and research programmes; and
(3) the low cost of information production,
transmis- sion and analysis opened up
through the internet, and modelling
applications that could now be fed with
real-time data. With the increasing
developmental and international
responsibilities assigned to climatology (and
others), perhaps the most defining feature of
the golden age is its increasingly global
character (Glantz and Adeel, 2000).
4 climatol- ogy is fundamentally about climate-
Summary
From its various divergences from human-
environment scholarship in geography and
pure meteorology, applied climatology has
had to develop a raison detre of
operational purpose that allowed
climatologists to develop currency in
scientific circles, institutions and funding
bodies. Applied climatologists continue to
largely sidestep questions of ontology,
despite some clear questions being raised
about the relevance of their approaches and
expertise to problems of social structure. The
relevance push for climatology can be
construed as an effort to make markets by
demonstrating the economic imperative for
various institutions to make use of
climatological expertise, a trend which
continues to this day (Changnon, 2005a;
Leviakangas, 2009; Maunder, 1970). Legates
(2012: 73) offers that any endeavor that is
affected by weather conditions is likely to be
enhanced or made more efficient by applied
cli- matology, which suggests that applied
proofing those sectors of society for whom the
argument sticks. The prospect that applied
climatologists are effectively subsidizing
certain industries and aiding in the production
of markets and capital is viewed as a positive
outcome. The question could always be
reframed as is the world better off not losing
crops unnecessarily? Thus, when viewed in an
industry-specific user frame of cli- mate
knowledge consumption, the differential
benefits of alternative social formations were
not
 Tadaki et al. 9
through reigning ideology, and what kinds of
actions are not allowed? Since human geogra-
questioned, perhaps largely due to the
phers of that time were engaged deeply with
opera- tional orientation of the field itself. It
questions of knowledge, agency and ideology,
was a field designed to serve clients, as
we find it generative to draw out thinking across
Mather points out: The dynamic future will
be forthcoming only when the applied
climatologist is able to show by active
example how the client can utilize and profit
from this most practical blending of clima-
tology and geography (Mather, 1972: 140
141).

III Towards an ideology of applied

climatology
In some ways, applied climatology can be
understood as a downstream discipline,
which accepts its problem framings from the
outside. The questions relating to social
structure and biophysical boundary conditions
of any given problem are largely set by the
client or user
maximizing crop yields, the timing of
tourism
operations, the data networks available, and so
on. From there the applied climatologist must
understand the users problem, and how
climate and weather affect his operation, in
order to be able to bring to bear on the
question the correct and most meaningful
climatological informa- tion (Mather, 1972:
138).
In this section, we revisit Thornes (1981)
invitation to think about the ideology of
applied climatology, in order to understand
more pre- cisely how applied climatologists
have regarded their practices as leading to
particular social- environmental outcomes. In
this, we hope to clarify our own argument
relating to how the study of biophysical
processes can be produc- tive of social
structures. We approach the notion of ideology
as the unexamined discourse that perpetuates
and sustains particular ways of knowing and
acting in the world (Gregory, 1978: 63).
Which kinds of roles and relations
(e.g. users versus producers) are stabilized

from that conversation (Gregory, 1978;
Harvey, 1974; Johnston, 1981). We start by
unpacking discourses of application in
geography, and move on to address the
levers through which applied climatologists
have imagined their political influence on
the world. Finally, we reflect on the reality
that applied climatologists have been largely
concerned with, and suggest that doors may
be opening for new problem sets which
reconstitute the downstream ontology of
the field.
1 Application in
geography
In the opening paper of the journal Applied
Geo- graphy, Briggs (1981) takes pains to
note that the methods that geographers use
are fundamen- tally value-laden propositions,
whether they are chosen by others or the
researchers themselves. He distinguishes two
types of applied research:
(1) Predefined problems can be pursued
through varied methodologies, con-
strained mainly by investigator prefer-
ences and resource availability. Often
such studies are incomparable with
each other, so cumulative methodology
development is slow.
(2) A problem-seeking approach looks to
apply preconceived methods or
theories to specific cases. It can have
the effect of turning problems into
classes by virtue of their methodology
they create stan- dardized
assessment packages, and cumulative
methodological development is much
faster. In this way, the problem
becomes a vehicle for the method.
In both cases, there are possibilities for discon-
nects between the specific problem and the
methodology chosen, but the delineation of
dif- ferent types does open up ways of seeing
how applied problems are constituted
differently from within and without the
investigator, within and without the discipline.
10 Progress in Physical Geography

For example, in the heyday of the rising

environmental awareness of the 1970s, the (1) being prepared to work within the status
Meadows et al. (1972) Limits to Growth report quo in order to fulfil research goals;
emerged as a powerful and iconic
representation of how applied environmental
scientists could model the planetary resource,
and provide a scientific (or politics-of-the-
biophysical) case for rational policy. Using
systems analysis, the reports authors claimed
to demonstrate that continuing (and
projected) population growth would simply
not be possible without massive
environmental degradation and a major
decrease in life quality for all inhabitants on
Earth. Their solution was simple: drastically
slow population growth. In a now-famous
paper, geographer David Harvey (1974) took
this ideology of sci- ence to task for its abuse
of the ethical neutrality assumption
embedded in its discourse. Far from providing
a simple or scientific answer, Harvey
exposed the hidden assumptions about
desir- able/tolerable quality of life, the
normative aims and functions of resource use
that all had to remain unquestioned in order
for the de- population thesis to hold ground.
Far from being a scientific analysis, the
approach provided a vehicle through which
to embed certain kinds of normative social-
environmental relationships into the
background, in order to promote a nar- row
ideological agenda. What this example
reveals is how choices about which
environmen- tal processes to study (and in
which ways) and how to relate those
processes to social variables can reproduce
assumptions about the means and ends of a
society.
In what might be the most direct (yet unin-
tended) response to Thornes (1981) concern
about the ideology of a narrowly positivist
applied climatology, Johnston (1981)
attempted to unpack the ideology of
quantitative metho- dology in applied
geography. To start, he out- lined three
assumptions on which applied geography
seemed to rest:
 (2) due to uncertainty in prediction,
accepting that efforts will be to 2 Power and knowledge in applied
solve current problems rather than
hypothe- tical future ones (serving climatology
future social formations); So how have applied climatologists imagined
(3) decision-making should be centralized, their place in the world? What kinds of agency
usually through the state. do they imagine for themselves, and for
others? Landsberg and Jacobs (1951) thought
Johnston highlights that there can be a that applied climatologists could develop an
disjunc- ture between the values of opera- tional purpose around four major
researchers and the avenues of power classes of problems:
through which risks and resources are
distributed. For instance, by sup- porting the (1) the design or specification of
centralized decision-making for a corrupt equipment or material;
regime, certain kinds of path- dependencies (2) the location and use of a facility or
may develop that may not be desirable in equipment (siting);
the big picture or long term. Importantly, (3) the planning of an operation (logistical
Johnston further goes on to set up a processes);
dichotomous picture of radical versus status- (4) climatic influences on biologic
quo orientations: geographers are either one activities.
or the other. We disagree, and suggest that
there are many resource relations and Each of these problems could be addressed
powers in-the-making (Clark et al., 2006), by finding (static) climatic optima for a
and applica- tions are always contributing to particular set
some of those relations more than others.
Tadaki et al. 11
weatherclimate conditions and those
in other parts of the physical and
of biophysical or quantitative parameters. In
socio-economic worlds;
many ways, this fuelled the notion of a client-
framed applied or service climatology
orientation which is still influential (Hobbs,
1997). However, Mather (1972: 138) later
suggested a fundamental role for the applied
climatologist is that of scepti- cal
diagnostician, who does not accept the state-
ment of the [climatic] ills of the user, but
who studies and probes in detail, until he is
able to uncover the real ills for himself [sic].
This orientation allows climatologists to iden-
tify other, more significant problems which
must be solved, as well as fram[ing] the
problem in such a way that a helpful solution
within the limits of available, supplied,
interpolated, or created data can be obtained
(Mather, 1972). Thus, the clima- tologist was
well within their remit to question the problem
framing at hand, albeit within a narrow range
of climate reasoning.
Changnon (2005a) provides a more compre-
hensive framework for the politics of applied
climatology. He envisions the field as
represen- table by three concentric circles the
inner core of instruments and data (first
group), the second group of interpreters
(climatologists) and the third group of users.
In this scheme, the role of applied
climatologists is to assemble the instru- ments,
data and their representation (first group) into
meaningful interpretations relating to the
biophysical concerns determined by the
users (third group). Applied climatologists are
thus pri- vileged mediators and translators of
social con- cerns into biophysical
interpretations. In line with this orientation,
Changnon (2005a) suggests the field ought to
concern itself primarily with:

(1) the design of structures and planning

activities;
(2) assessments of current and past condi-
tions including evaluation of extreme
events;
(3) the study of the relationships between

(4) the operation of weather-sensitive
sys- tems that employ climatic
information in making decisions.
From these brief reflections, we can take
away that (1) the project of applied
climatology has expanded from a narrow
emphasis on siting and materials through to
thinking about activities more broadly, and
(2) climatologists can be understood as
social mediators, whose task lies in bridging
social concerns with biophysical processes,
and whose mandate is not dictated from the
outside as a matter of principle, but should
be open to reframing. However, it is clear
that while a classically trained applied cli-
matologist might consider it their job to
study the biophysical relations between
climate and social variables for the benefit of
society, they would explicitly not consider
the social rela- tions of how they impact in
society. Thus this notional ideology of
applied climatology con- tains a significant
contradiction: on the one hand, the practice
of linking atmospheric and social variables is
fundamentally about those biophysical
relationships and not about social structure,
but, on the other hand, climatologists are
encouraged to reframe the climatic problem,
that is, to engage in restructuring society.
3 Scientific realism and practising concern
In the previous sections we have attempted
to open up thinking about the non-
determinative form of applied climatological
research. There are conversations to be had
about ontology, we are not shackled to method
except in our own minds, and the things we do
affect the distribu- tion of power and the
allocation of resources. There is room to
move when framing up and thinking about
what the problem actually is. However, a
common realist response to such
observations is so what?. As Lewthwaite
(1966: 22) responded to determinist
discussions, such name-calling evokes
distorted images and congeals thought. The
appropriate query to be
12 Progress in Physical Geography

placed against the conclusion is not is this distributive implica- tions of producing these
pos- sibilism? or is this determinism? but truths have largely
is this true?.
For many climatologists, the truth of the
environmental relationships they explore is
placed at the centre of all normative ideals. If
a finding is true, it ought to be made known to
the world and used for the benefit of humans.
Demeritt (1996) and Dixon and Jones (1996)
respond to this assertion of a realist scientific
geography by emphasizing that the categories,
techniques and practices of scientific inquiries
are intrinsically culturally mediated. The
choice and identity of the question-frames
and tech- niques that carry weight in a given
period have implications for future pathways.
The problem sets and buzzwords that we
mobilize to align with major investment
programmes, the kinds of human-environment
models and the visions of environmental
governance that we embed and promote
through our own work are not neu- tral or
apolitical (Demeritt, 2009; Harden, 2012;
Tadaki et al., 2012). Thus, to respond to the
question of is it true? we can ask: which
truths and at what costs (to whom) and in
whose benefit and in support of what kinds of
problem definitions, categories and forms of
social orga- nization over which others?
This section has set out to explore a notional
ideology of applied climatology how it
imagi- nes its responsibilities to the world, and
how its practitioners ought to go about their
work. Applied climatologists have often
positioned their work within a politics of the
biophysical, emphasizing the positivist
relationships and biophysical mechanisms
that lie at the centre of their research
questions (Thornes and McGregor, 2003). The
ideology of applied cli- matology has been
practised and articulated through time as
being concerned with finding the truth of
particular biophysical processes which may
have social, economic and cultural
significance (which are not of primary
concern). The funding, framing and
 been taken for granted, and remain largely
underexplored. We have highlighted,
however, that none of these truth-pursuits are
necessarily natural or somehow non-
negotiable. The meth- odologies, concepts,
instruments and discip- linary framings we
use, the industries and governance
institutions that we enrol ourselves into, the
kinds of agency we ascribe to certain
categories of environmental and
sociocultural phenomena all of these are
within the choice set of the applied
climatologist, and all of these have
implications that ought to concern us all. In
the next section, we explore some of these
implications through five examples of
recent research threads in applied
climatology, high- lighting the work of
categories and techniques in framing political
action.
IV Emerging objects and
practices in applied climatology
The ideas, objects and practices that we use to
know the world are tangled up with how we
come to think about action (Comrie, 2010;
Jasanoff, 2004). As a move toward thinking
about the wider social structures that shape our
questions and the climates that we produce,
this section explores five recent examples in
applied climatology applied because they
are tied directly to recommendations about
human action, and climatology because
scientific understandings of atmospheric
processes are central. These examples have
been chosen to reflect (1) a diversity of
scientific and institu- tional contexts within
which climatologists work, and (2) a
common empirical focus, in contrast to the
well-documented issues sur- rounding global
climate modelling and geoengi- neering (e.g.
Edwards, 2010; Hulme, 2012a).
While our summary is necessarily brief and
partial, we argue that critical readings of these
examples (both negative and affirmative) pro-
vide insight into how the application of climate
science can be understood as a cultural
interven- tion as much as any pure
representation of the
Tadaki et al. 13
investments through centralized decision-
making on approved adaptation
truth. In elaborating elements of the cultural
work of applied climatology, we can begin
to think differently about how the study of
atmo- spheric process is linked to the
production of social-environmental outcomes.

1 Climate-change adaptation
Understanding and predicting climate variabil-
ity and change has become a mantra of much
climate-change adaptation research. In order
to decide on what infrastructural adaptations
may be needed for future equilibrium climates,
climates and costs are projected into the future,
in order to rationally allocate adaptation fund-
ing in both international and local development
contexts (Hulme et al., 2011). This top-down
form of planning has been referred to as
scien- tific management (Brunner and
Lynch, 2010) and has been critiqued on both
scientific and distributive grounds.
In a scientific analysis, climate is a
complex
system and ongoing uncertainties about its
oper- ation mean that projections may send
large-scale investments in the wrong direction,
resulting in wasted (scarce) funds (Dessai et
al., 2009). Fur- ther, even if projections do pan
out, this creates a major sunk investment into
particular infra- structures, which guarantees
certain future path-dependencies (e.g. on
certain industries). Climate-change studies
therefore continue to frame their relevance
through a determinative predict and adapt
rationale which centres cli- mate projections
as the primary determinant of social
investment (Mahony and Hulme, 2012).
In a more political or distributive analysis,
the scientific management approach to adapta-
tion can provide a rationale for top-down
alloca- tion of resources, and also a way for
national or international actors to impose
their visions of adaptation onto local
communities (Barnett and Campbell, 2010;
Brunner and Lynch, 2010). Thus reductionist
framings of adaptation can channel
projects, rather than empowering
communities to distribute resources across 2 Commercialization of climate
multiple projects and investments (and science
decreasing path- dependency on particular In many ways, climate as an object of an anal-
industries, infrastruc- ture, etc.) (Thomsen et ysis and climatology as an economic service
al., 2012). have come to be packaged as commercial
Moving beyond an understanding of the com- modities. As a hazard and resource,
climate adaptation problem as requiring a climatic analyses have often been folded
reductionist scientific solution which into private corporations as part of their
climate projections and economic analysis general operation. With the rise in weather
claim to pro- vide how can we begin to forecasting applica- tions made possible
work through the complex local politics of through advances in synoptic and dynamic
multiple threats and stressors of meteorology, and new observational
environmental and socio-economic change technologies, climate as a risk
(Wilbanks and Kates, 2010)? How can has never been more calculable. Weather
climatological work be practised within derivatives emerged from weather insurance
broader conversations about environmental markets in the early 1990s, and grew swiftly
(and non- environmental) community values into a global industry channelling billions of
and futures (Adger et al., 2009) in ways that dollars annually (Changnon, 2005a). These
do not reduce the future to climate (Hulme, new commodities provide a way to govern cli-
2011)? And per- haps also relevant to our matic risk to industry through the private sec-
discussion here, what kinds of tor, as well as enabling the development of
methodologies, categories, institutions and more industry-specific technologies and cli-
practices might we bring into being to real- mate packages (Randalls, 2010).
ize these aims?
14
While some have hailed the rise of weather
commodity markets as a successful demonstra-
tion of the relevance and success of applied
climatology (Changnon, 2005b; Hunt, 2013;
Legates, 2012), others have expressed an
unease over the forms of social organization
that these commodity systems promote
(Pollard et al., 2008; Thornes and Randalls,
2007). Underlying these concerns are simple
questions. Is this the best and most
empowering way of practising climate
knowledge for the creation of a fair and happy
society? How do these formations distri- bute
the costs and benefits of participation, and how
is participation determined? Should the
benefits of climatic expertise be only available
to those who have the means to pay for it
through the private sector, and, if not, how
should climate expertise be allocated? Further,
what additional forms of organization (e.g.
other commodity markets) do these formations
legitimate, and are those projects we want to
support in this way (Stanley, 2013)?
These developments have also produced a
number of tensions that extend beyond the
bounds of commercial applications. Thornes
and Randalls (2007) explore how the atmo-
sphere is increasingly being represented as an
economic resource, amenable to economic
decision-making analyses and criteria. The
development of emissions trading schemes, the
notion of atmospheric property or airspace
and cost-benefit analyses conducted across a
range of atmospheric scales all of these
commodity discourses require some kind of
scientific articulation to make them tangible
and legible (Hulme, 2010; Randalls, 2011;
Thornes and Randalls, 2007).
In moving beyond commodity discourses
of climate, some scholars have been engaged
with developing an alternate set of conceptual
frames around the notion of atmospheric ser-
vices (Cooter et al., 2013; Thornes, 2010). As
a way of articulating (and valuing) the non-
financial and public-good benefits of climatic
processes, these approaches embrace wider
Progress in Physical Geography
thinking in the ecosystem services literature
and seek to draw out how atmospheric
processes quantitatively and qualitatively
affect things humans care about (Anderson-
Teixeira et al., 2012; Thornes, 2010). The
approach seeks to embody a more holistic
(e.g. more than eco- nomic/quantitative)
orientation to atmospheric and land-use
management by giving voice to those
meanings and relations traditionally left out
of resource assessments. However, there is
some concern over whether an ecosystem
services approach in practice is merely com-
modification by another name, which needs
to grapple with its own implicit hierarchies of
method and quantification (Robertson, 2012).
In sum, wherever debates about atmospheric
services end up, it is clear that the underlying
frameworks and lenses through which
applied climatological research is
conducted have important implications for
the physical scien- tists doing the work, and
yet few physical scientists have embraced
responsibility for what these categories and
practices are doing in and on the world.
3 Climate services for development
The prospect of expanding and
institutionalizing public climate services is
gaining momentum in national and
international climate knowledge circuits
(Dutton, 2002; Semazzi, 2011). In 2009, the
3rd World Climate Conference held by the
World Meteorological Organization produced
a declaration from participating Heads of
State and governments to establish a Global
Framework for Climate Services (hereafter
referred to as the Framework) to
strengthen production, availability, delivery
and application of science-based climate pre-
diction and services (http://www.wmo.int/
wcc3/declaration_en.php).
The Framework was advanced from the
basis that developing countries lack capability
in producing and using climate knowledge for
purposes of development (WMO, 2009).
Tadaki et al. 15
these forecasts can often be most readily
used by
International networks of scholars and
practi- tioners are now being summoned to
what might be the largest climate-
development project in history, involving
international infrastructure for the sharing of
data, collaborative research and modelling,
the development of a user-interface
programme and an umbrella organization
called the Climate Services Information
System, to reorganize existing international
climate net- works to facilitate implementation
of the Frame- work (WMO, 2009). As with
other national and international climate-
development projects, practitioners will have
to negotiate through two major challenges.
First, climate-development efforts need to
more directly engage with user-subjectivities,
which do not always neatly align with climate
science outputs or products that
climatologists are interested in and familiar
with producing (Dow and Carbone, 2007;
Kandlikar et al., 2011). Much work in
Pacific island commu- nities and elsewhere
has highlighted the defi- ciencies of loading
dock approaches to climate forecasts, where
climate knowledge pro- ducers simply export
their outputs to end-users without concern for
their relevance and use (Brunner and Lynch,
2010; Cash et al., 2006). In engaging with the
needs and concerns of the communities they
serve, new pathways, new out- puts, new
techniques become relevant and viable for
climatologists to consider (Dilling and Lemos,
2011). Dialoguing with end-users can help
clima- tologists rethink and reframe what
climate is actu- ally about in these contexts,
and this can prevent conditionalities from
forming which create path- dependencies, such
as demanding large-scale adaptation
infrastructure plans to demonstrate using
climate information packages.
Second, practitioners are encountering the
prospect that the production of climate knowl-
edge is a political intervention into complex
development processes. Simply providing fore-
casts or information of use to someone is no
lon- ger able to be seen as ethically neutral, as

community elites, which may exacerbate
inequality, subsidize particular
classes/groups, create path-dependencies and
marginalize those most vulnerable to
climatic variability and change (Lemos and
Dilling, 2007). If the aim of providing
climate services for development is to
emancipate the poorest and most vulnera- ble
rather than certain privileged sectors of
society climate practitioners will need to
con- sider and engage with the social
formations in which they work (Barnett and
Campbell, 2010; Brunner and Lynch, 2010;
Lemos and Dilling, 2007). Viewing climate
science as an intervention into sociopolitical
meanings and institutional formations of
development can help to open up
understandings of and possible sites of
action for a progressive politics for
applied climatology.
4 Sustainable
architecture
The fields of building design and urban
plan- ning have long been thought a ripe
area for demonstrating the relevance of urban
climatol- ogy, but while much theory has been
developed there remains a notable lack of
practical applica- tions (Mills, 2006; Oke,
1984). Mills (2006) argues that urban
climatologists can help advance the project of
sustainable design through develop- ing
prescriptive applications for aligning building
energy regimes with climatic processes to
reduce energy usage and waste. By
embracing certain pre-defined parameters such
as building tempera- ture and humidity,
climatologists can help to reframe design
questions around climate, and contribute to
sustainability projects.
Fundamentally, however, this formulation
rests on climatologists optimizing around a set
of externally defined set of parameters (energy
use, temperature level, etc.). Baek (2010)
argues for a cultural climatology which goes
further and questions the parameters that
define sus- tainability. Western building
design principles
(e.g. thick interior walls) and the framing of
indoor climate as an optimization problem
have
16 Progress in Physical Geography

homogenized human-home relations from cli- frame- work, using air-quality monitoring
mate, which stands as a significant historical networks and
shift in Japanese practice. Traditional Japanese
houses had thick outside walls with only paper
walls separating rooms the concept of
privacy did not exist until it was normalized
through the post-war American occupation
(Baek, 2010). Climate regulation within the
home was a social process family would
gather around the hiba- chi (woodburner) for
warmth, and the courtyard was designed as a
necessary obstacle which fos- tered relations to
the sky. The question for designers was thus
not one of optimizing cli- mate parameters
per se, but about considering how to
reproduce and articulate social values and
enable certain social practices.
If we want to move toward a socially and
environmentally sustainable architecture, per-
haps it is worth questioning the framing of
applied climate pursuits (i.e. thickness of
walls, functions of home, relations to
activities) rather than simply treating the
atmosphere as a resource to be optimized.
These frames are imbued with (cultural)
values and normative assumptions about the
worlds we ought to make. Rather than taking
Baeks proposition as a call to banish
insulating inner walls, we take it as an
invitation to think creatively about the work
that climatology does, as it frames biophysical
processes in ways which can reproduce and
embed particular human-atmospheric relations
into social formations and decision contexts.
This can lead us to ask: which relations do we
want to sustain and reproduce through our
atmospheric engagements? Such questions are
already being asked in relation to climate-
change vulnerability and adaptation (Adger
et al., 2009), and should be extended into
diverse atmospheric relations.

5 Atmospheric justice
Atmospheric pollution has historically been
practised within an ambient concentration
dispersion models for fixed-location sites as
a way of estimating and governing
atmospheric risk (Longhurst et al., 2009;
Whitehead, 2009). Through using fixed
monitoring networks, risk is conceived as an
environmental hazard which harms people
through local exposure, and with ambient
concentrations being governed through
standards and source-control mechanisms.
However, emerging threads in air-pollution
climatology and epidemiology are providing
different ways of thinking about and
research- ing and governing
atmospheric pollution. Pearce and Kingham
(2008) demonstrate how even ambient air-
pollution risk is unevenly dis- tributed across
social and environmental space, which raises
questions about atmospheric equity are
spatially differential standards rele- vant if
population density is clustered around air-
pollution nodes? If an ambient envir-
onmental framing of air pollution takes
as its object the location-bound
measurement and modelling of atmospheric
pollution, new emerging approaches instead
take humans as the objects and subjects
of research, mea- surement and governance.
By understanding air-pollution risk as
dependent on the flows, tem- poralities and
exposures of humans, researchers can
assemble new atmospheres of justice (Bick-
erstaff and Walker, 2003). What pollution
atmo- spheres are particular groups or classes
of people exposed to over a particular day?
Which human practices such as travel modes
produce which kinds of atmospheric
exposures? Are some forms of human
activities or some lifestyle patterns more at
risk than others, and onto whom is the risk
placed, and by whom is it instigated (Dirks et
al., 2012; Gulliver and Briggs, 2004; Kaur et
al., 2007)? Which kinds of sociocultural narra-
tives are polluting practices contributing to,
and how might we re-understand our
atmospheric science projects to gear them
toward promoting atmospheric justice
(Cupples, 2009)? The objects and subjects
that we choose to construct and analyse as
researchers are not natural. They reflect
particular norms and commitments of
 Tadaki et al.
researchers, and they reproduce, strengthen
and weaken certain ideas about how to govern
human action.
6 An ontological reassessment?
The five examples explored here are not
intended as a narrow call to pick up particular
lines of research, but rather as a provocation to
open up thinking about the subjects and
objects in applied climatology. How we
understand and practise our climatological
objects as research- ers can be a generative
action, creating atmo- spheres rather than
simply describing them. The categories,
objects and practices of applied climatology,
viewed in this way, can be constitu- tive of
new forms of atmospheric, environmental and
geographical imagination. This can lead us to
ask new questions what ontological scaffold-
ing are we using, and what does this mean
for how the problems we describe will be
acted upon? How are we reproducing,
challenging or reframing ideas about
sustainability, rele- vance and so on?
Which categories, which investment
narratives, which methods and which
institutional formations are we practising
into relevance through our research?
V Conclusion from climate and
society to cultural climatology and
beyond
If there has been an influence of radical
human geography on physical geography, it has
been in encouraging a more questioning attitude to
the social relevance of physiographic science.
(Douglas, 1987: 530)
Historical and contemporary practices of
applied climatology have often made use of the
ontological and methodological containers of
climate and society as a way of bounding,
separating and understanding their research
objects (Glantz, 1990; Kates et al., 1985; Stehr
and von Storch, 2010). Indeed, it could be
argued that the stabilization of climate and
17
society is the raison detre of applied climatol-
ogy. Climatology has been understood as a set
of stabilized, objective and scientific practices
which are then applied to guide and provide
insight into matters of social concern. Such an
understanding leaves questions about society
to be taken up elsewhere, and it locks off cli-
mate from social responsibility by keeping it
accountable to the norms of climatology as a
positivistic biophysical science (e.g.
McGregor, 2006).
In this paper we have advanced the case
that, rather than simply applying an
objective understanding of climate to some
external notion of society, applied
climatology might be better understood as
applying propositions for society out into the
world. Throughout his- tory, applied
climatologists have made careers out of
promoting normative arguments for cer- tain
human-atmospheric relations out into the
worlds of academic peers, research pro-
grammes, funding streams and development
institutions. How should we allocate the costs
and benefits of living with atmospheric
variabil- ity? Shall we conduct economic
valuations? Shall we create crop-yield
models for certain crops for certain industries
to profit from? Shall we articulate public
perceptions or cultural traditions and
govern for these in some way? Answers to
these questions are not simple or objective
but are fashioned by the categories, practices
and commitments of the actors who assemble
them into conversation with contem- porary
matters of social concern. Applied cli-
matologists have always been engaged in
doing the relational work of climate.
As an organizing ontology, perhaps climate
and society has facilitated an understanding
of applied climatology through a politics of
the biophysical, largely unconcerned with
the structural politics of framing and the
institu- tional landscapes of atmospheric
justice. If there is one relevant point to take
from the new atmospheric category of the
Anthropocene, it might be that this prospect
of a biophysical
18
(and not human-cultural) politics can no
longer be sustained.
The application of climate science to prob-
lems of social choice is as much a cultural
intervention concerned with the reproduction
of meaning as a scientific analysis concerned
with representation (Demeritt, 1996; Tadaki
et al., 2012). The prospect of a cultural clima-
tology highlights to us the power of physical
geographers to generate, circulate, resist and
embed social and political meanings of envi-
ronmental processes and change. The cate-
gories, approaches and rationales we employ
to make the atmosphere governable are
embedded with wider ideas about how to act
within and upon it (Coe et al., 2012; Hulme,
2010; Randalls, 2011).
Through our work as applied climatologists
we (often unintentionally) reproduce certain
ideas about risk, distribution and social
organi- zation; we strengthen certain
meanings relat- ing to private atmospheric
commodities and capitalist derivative
markets, technocratic and centralized models
of governance, spatial con- ceptions of air-
pollution risk, agricultural path- dependencies
of development, and so on. Our analyses are
interventions of meaning. Moving on from
thinking about a notional cultural cli-
matology as that-which-is-concerned-with-
culture in addition to the regular (non-cultural)
work of climatology (Thornes and McGregor,
2003), we value the concept as an active verb.
As a broader and more reflexive ontological
and political framework, perhaps we can
think about the work of climatology as the
practice of assembling atmospheric relations
into matters of human concern. By under-
standing and embracing our work as funda-
mentally relational, we can begin to think
differently about what kinds of atmospheric
relations we want to produce through our
work the categories we use, the institu-
tional channels we build, the conversations
we develop. We have suggested in this paper
that rethinking the work of application in
Progress in Physical Geography
climatology can and should be seen as an
empowering and engaged political project.
This not a call for climatologists to team
up with social scientists to conduct
comprehen- sive research (Ziegler et al.,
2013), as valuable as such work is and will
continue to be, nor is it a call for
climatologists to claim the social domain
from social scientists. Rather, embra- cing the
relational work of climate means culti- vating
an awareness about what our scientific modes
of operation do in and on the world. Which
biophysical processes are we studying (and
which processes should we study), and with
what meanings to different circuits of
knowledge and action? How can the
production of climatological knowledge be
understood and practised more directly and
openly as invoking questions (and relying on
assumptions about) the means and ends of
society? Instead of accepting social frames
and institutions and reproducing their logics
without question, we can turn the question
around which environ- mental processes for
which kinds of institutions for which kinds of
politics (Hulme, 2012b)?
Applied climatologists and geographers
need not think themselves passive recipients
of research questions, methods, categories and
practices. There is ample space to critique,
affirm, embed and contest circulating
narratives about the problems of living with
environmental variability. Castree (2012)
probably had this in mind when he argued for
physical geographers to think about practising
engaged pluralism. How do we come to
know our research ques- tions, and how do we
develop our framing ontologies? Further, what
practices can we pur- sue that allow us to
reframe our research ques- tions and
governing categories? How can we empower
ourselves, our students and our vari- ous
colleagues and stakeholders to engage with
different ways of knowing the world and doing
the relational work of climate?
Is this the end for applied climatology? We
think not. With emerging investment trajec-
tories emphasizing the production of
research
Tadaki et al. 19

that is relevant to diverse publics, perhaps the

applied label will continue to add value to our
various institutional narratives. Yet, even if
the category remains, our understandings and
actions may see it do a different kind of work.
Indeed, while continuing struggles over
relevance, rigour and method may see major
changes to the cate- gories, disciplines and
practices of atmospheric inquiry, the relational
work of climate will con- tinue to be done.

Acknowledgements
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their
critical and constructive comments and suggestions.
We alone are responsible for the choices of
emphasis and the arguments of the paper.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-
for-profit sectors.

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