ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Oceanographic models and diplomacy by the margins

• In Event: At the Fringes of Earth Science Models

English Abstract

Historians of science and technology are increasingly pushing forward a global history of physical oceanography that highlights the interplay of scientific, territorial and colonialist aims of imperial powers over the past two centuries (Anderson and Rozwadowski, 2016; Adler, 2024). However, little efforts have been made so far to foster a regional shift that bridges the missing gap between such global histories and the contested expansion and institutionalization of physical oceanography in so-called ‘marginal’ seas, like the Mediterranean. Tellingly, the few historiographical work to this effect has shown that the exploration and modelling of Mediterranean deep waters and currents has been long embedded in a network of geopolitical, strategic, diplomatic and epistemic constraints that played a crucial role in the integration of knowledge of the multiple scales of ocean dynamics, from the local up to basin and global scales (Camprubí, 2018).

This paper delves into such constraints to critically assess the historical linkages between global and regional physical oceanographic modelling, tracing the missing connections between the actors and practitioners involved in the international ‘big’ oceanographic enterprises of the second half of the 20th century and research conducted in the Mediterranean basin. By relying on scientific publications, technical reports and archival material from UNESCO, I will show how its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) negotiated and achieved the execution of the collaborative Physical Oceanography of the Eastern Mediterranean (POEM, 1982-1995) program, which, by means of international cooperation and diplomacy, produced the first comprehensive numerical models of the circulation of the basin against a rather tense and unfavourable regional geopolitical environment.

Author

• Pablo Lima Hernandez, Universidad de Sevilla