ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Code red! Extreme weather and changing cultures of prediction, 1860-2010

• In Event: Mediating Meteorology: Communicating Climate and Weather Knowledge from Antiquity to the Present

English Abstract

Storm warnings were the most visible part of the new culture of prediction of modern meteorology in the 19th century. Like weather forecasts, they were controversial. In the Netherlands, the storm warning system was changed several times in subsequent decades, up to the introduction of ‘weather alarms’ in 2010.
The discussions surrounding storm warnings are closely related to differing views on the role of experts and the relation between science-based and experience-based expertise. They are also closely related to expectations of the role of the state in dealing with extreme weather, especially in the context of emerging worries about climate change-induced increases of extreme weather events. In this paper, I will analyze the changing culture of prediction of storm warnings from 19th-century liberalism via the 20th-century welfare state to 21st-century neoliberalism.

Author

• David Baneke, Utrecht University