Southern skies: Australian atmospheric research and global climate change
Disaster Prevention and Management
ISSN: 0965-3562
Article publication date: 15 December 2020
Issue publication date: 10 February 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Australian climate scientists in advancing the state of knowledge about the causes and mechanisms of climatic change and variability in the Southern Hemisphere during the 1970 and 1980s.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the methods and insights of environmental history and the history of science to analyse archival and published data pertaining to research on atmospheric pollution, the Southern Oscillation and the regional impacts of climate change.
Findings
Australia's geopolitical position, political interests and environmental sensitivities encouraged Australian scientists and policymakers to take a leading role in the Southern Hemisphere in the study of global environmental change.
Originality/value
This article builds on critiques of the ways in which planetary and global knowledge and governance disguise the local and situated scientific and material processes that construct, sustain and configure them.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Fiona Williamson for her patient guidance during the preparation of this article, and for the opportunity to present this research at the 2018 conference, “Asian Extremes: Climate, Meteorology and Disaster in History”. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback, which improved the article greatly. Research for this article was supported by the Australian Academy of Science Moran Award for History of Science Research (2020). Finally, the author thanks Neville Nicholls, Barrie Pittock, and Penny Whetton for their support, encouragement and insights.
Citation
Morgan, R.A. (2021), "Southern skies: Australian atmospheric research and global climate change", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 47-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-06-2020-0187
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited