Immeasurable Weather

Sara J. Grossman is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies on the Johanna Alderfer Harris and William H. Harris Professorship in Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College.

“In her analysis of the relationship between weather data and human experience, Sara J. Grossman’s main point-all the data in the world won’t save us-is stupendously timely and significant. Scholars of environmental history, of environmental humanities, and of the history of science will learn a great deal from this important book.” - Joyce E. Chaplin, author of (Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit) “Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend.” - Sarah Jaquette Ray, Professor, Cal Poly Humboldt "A sociocultural history of weather data, Immeasurable Weather is a feat both in substance and style. . . . Many key themes throughout Immeasurable Weather will be worthwhile to scholars interested in the critical study of data, automation, and technology. Historians of technology will find intriguing connections between the militarization of weather data and the rise of wartime computing." - Sara M. B. Simon (Technology and Culture) "Immeasurable Weather is a timely addition to the study of meteorology’s formative decades. Its introduction of settler colonialism as an analytical frame to the history of that field is both an interesting and valuable perspective. . . . [T]he book surely ought to find its way onto the shelf of anyone interested in the evolution of US meteorology, the history of settler colonialism and American nation building, or data in the history of science more generally." - Robert Suits (Physics Today) "Immeasurable Weather offers timely and crucial anti-colonial and feminist perspectives amid the growing interest in the history and philosophy of the atmosphere. This work is particularly valuable for scholars in STS and environmental history. It would also be of interest to professionals in meteorology and climate science." - Dong Xia (Science as Cutlure)

• List of Illustrations  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction: About American Weather  11. Dreaming Data: Locating Early Nineteenth-Century Weather Data  252. Gendering Data: The Women of the Smithsonian Meteorological Project  573. Data in the Sky: Scientific Kites, Settler Masculinity, and Quantifying the Air  874. Data’s Edge: Cleaning Data and Dust Bowl Crises  1115. Ugly Data in the Age of Satellites and Extreme Weather  137Epilogue: Data’s Inheritance  171Notes  179Bibliography  209Index  229