Articles | Volume 30, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-30-31-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-30-31-2023
Brief communication
 | 
31 Jan 2023
Brief communication |  | 31 Jan 2023

Brief communication: Climate science as a social process – history, climatic determinism, Mertonian norms and post-normality

Hans von Storch

Related authors

Evolutions of the seasonal anticyclonic circulation around the Qingdao cold water mass in the China marginal sea and its mechanism
Lin Lin, Hans von Storch, and Yang Ding
Ocean Sci., 21, 2215–2232, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-2215-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-2215-2025, 2025
Short summary
Internal and forced ocean variability in the Mediterranean Sea
Roberta Benincasa, Giovanni Liguori, Nadia Pinardi, and Hans von Storch
Ocean Sci., 20, 1003–1012, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-20-1003-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/os-20-1003-2024, 2024
Short summary
The role of history in and for climate science – Social context and oral accounts
Hans von Storch
Hist. Geo Space. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2023-6,https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2023-6, 2023
Revised manuscript under review for HGSS
Short summary

Cited articles

Adolf, M. and Stehr, N.: Knowledge, Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2nd Edn., ISBN 9783958321458, 2016. a
Arrhenius, S.: On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 41, 237–276, 1896. a, b
Beck, S.: Zwischen Entpolitisierung von Politik und Politisierung von Wissenschaft: Die wissenschaftliche Stellvertreterdebatte um Klimapolitik, in: Politik im Klimawandel, edited by: Schüttemeyer, S., nomos, 238–258, ISBN 3-8329-4732-9, 2011. a
Boykoff, M. T. and Boykoff, J. M.: Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage, Geoforum, 38, 1190–1204, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.01.008, 2007. a
Bray, D. and von Storch, H.: Climate Science: An Empirical Example of Postnormal Science, B. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 80, 439–456, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1999)080<0439:CSAEEO>2.0.CO;2, 1999. a
Download
Short summary
Climate science is, as all sciences, a social process and as such conditioned by the zeitgeist of the time. It has an old history and has attained different political significances. Today, it is the challenge of anthropogenic climate change – and societies want answers about how to deal with it. In earlier times, it was mostly the ideology of climate determinism which led people to construct superiority and eventually colonialism.
Share