Weathering energy geographies: Engineering meteorology in the North Atlantic

Abstract

This article traces how the development of meteorology in the North Atlantic during the twentieth century relied on the expansion of electrical infrastructures, which in turn were dependent on meteorological knowledge production. Specifically, it follows the engagements between a subset of actors—electrical engineers and meteorologists—who collaborated between the 1930s and 1960s and founded the field of Engineering Meteorology in order to make meteorological knowledge applicable to energy industry concerns. Through examining the modes of knowing and doing that emerged through these collaborations, this article traces the ways in which understandings of weather came to be embedded in the design, management, and modification of energy infrastructures. It further illustrates how the entanglements between engineering and meteorology shaped pollution trajectories and environmental violence, resulting in lasting implications for how energy geographies are weathered differently across time and space. In bringing together decolonial and feminist engagements with weather and energy, this article proposes a new approach to thinking about the weather-energy-society nexus by exploring how energy geographies and weather worlds are co-produced, a framework I call weathering energy geographies.