Abstract
In the USA, civilian meteorological organizations traditionally controlled weather services during peacetime, and the military controlled them during wartime. However, after World War II, the military retained control of meteorological research funding. Academics pursued theoretical issues, and the US Weather Bureau concentrated on improving forecasts. Post-war advances in electronic computing encouraged these groups to pool funding, theoretical knowledge, and forecasting skills, to develop numerical weather prediction techniques that would radically change 20th-century meteorology. The Institute for Advanced Study’s Meteorology Project illustrates how research is negotiated across intra-disciplinary boundaries, in relation to Cold War era themes of international scientific exchange, the integration of practice with theory, the role of research schools, and the tension between military and civilian control of science. The present paper also raises a significant epistemological issue characteristic of 20th-century science: who possesses the better scientific understanding - those who crunch numbers, or those for whom observational data hold meaning?
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