Sensing weather and climate: Phenomenological and ethnographic approaches

Abstract

In light of the increasing tendency to view extreme weather events as experiences of climate change, we revisit how weather and climate are measured and experienced, contributing to an ongoing dialogue on the atmospheric between phenomenology, media studies and geography. We make use of and complicate the concept of sensing to make sense of the heterogeneous modes of experiencing and measuring weather. First, we detail the history and phenomenology of weather between experience and measurement. Providing evidence for our theoretical account, we go through two ethnographic examples of weather-sensing, looking at the work of meteorologists and a weather-machine. From weather-sensing, we extrapolate the possibility of climate-sensing to aid in the comprehension of climate change. Sensing, we conclude, promises to reconnect weather and climate, the measured and experienced, the proximate and remote, the bodily and abstract.