Paul N . Edwards , A Vast Machine : Computer Models , Climate Data , and the Politics of Global Warming

Meteorology is a global endeavor consuming vast resources for keeping an eye on the entire world. Thereby it not only detects the present state of the atmosphere, but also envisions its possible futures. Thus, the knowledge instruments of meteorology are permanent remote sensing, worldwide nets of weather stations, world data archives, and global circulation models computing weather and climate phenomena on supercomputers. No other scientific discipline provides such a data-intensive, global cyberinfrastructure and not many other areas attract more public attention than meteorology. Climate change and extreme weather events are challenging for meteorologists as well as the global public. How does this vast machine of global meteorology work? Which institutions, theories, methods, and infrastructures drive scientific development? Paul N. Edwards gives a well written review of this vast machine on more than 500 pages. Within fifteen chapters he outlines the development of 20th and 21st century meteorology based on its roots in the studies of natural scientists since the 17th century. Edwards begins his narration with the establishment of global space and time. Natural scientists like Edmond Halley, George Hadley and later Alexander von Humboldt, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and William Ferrel have measured global space and thus constructed it scientifically–followed in the 19th century by international organizations, which have increasingly coordinated and standardized global space and time. For meteorology, the year 1873 marked the beginning of coordinated international exchange when the first International Meteorological Congress was held in Vienna and agreed to prepare for an International Meteorological Organization (IMO). Meteorologists organized themselves as an international scientific community and they started to exchange weather data