Forecasting Disaster: Meteorology and Flood Control, 1950-1967

• In Event: Environment, Technology, and Science in the Late USSR

Abstract

This paper (or rather, compiling of notes) proposes a comparative analysis of the development of meteorological sciences in the United States, Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom as equally derived from post-war technological determinism that saw all three major industrial powers turn toward geoengineering. In particular, this paper will examine the drive to control floods in New Orleans, Leningrad, and London, and how those projects helped develop dynamic meteorology.

Author

• Alexander Thomas Herbert, Worcester Polytechnic Institute