School of Social and Political Science

Introduction

Research into those who make predictions from tracking weather patterns has expanded beyond the study of scientist experts to encompass also the citizen scientist, with predictions and interpretations of weather and climate made from a place of indigenous expertise now recognised as ethnoclimatology.

Fishermen in Southeastern Brazil observe climatic, oceanic and astronomical conditions to avoid bad weather and ensure a productive catch (Alves 2018), and potato farmers in the Peruvian Andes accurately track rainfall through assessing the visibility of stars, an thus atmospheric changes related the El Niño weather events (Orlove et al 2002), whilst Livingston posits that the ‘deep long-standing, and metaphysically expansive’ knowledge of rainwater in Botswana is a basis from which to imagine ‘alternative…planetary politics’ (2019:12). Further, Lidskog and Sundqvist ‘open up the role of scientific expertise for empirical investigation’, emphasising the social constructs that surround the concept of expertise, a combination of ‘competence and performance’ that leads to a sense of ‘group belonging’ (2018). 

Whilst some authors have pointed to the dismissal of other possible forms of expertise from climate scientists, the inclusion of social sciences into climate and weather research has allowed for points of overlap and agreement to be highlighted, and the pressing need for local understandings of the past, present and future of the weather to be taken into account. Welch-Devine et al. (2020) emphasise the opportunities posed by citizen science, filling in gaps in weather data both from historical knowledge and direct observation of the weather. The impact of this engagement with ethnoclimatology has rippled outwards from the social sciences with the IPCC now recognising the need to draw in indigenous knowledge to fight climate heating, and COP events hosting a large number of indigenous experts. Nevertheless, the issue so clearly so deeply entwined in questions of coloniality and sovereignty, tensions persist in whose expertise is foregrounded or forgotten in these processes (Wright & Tofa 2021),