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Accepted Paper:

Modelling and sensing the atmosphere: an exploration of environmental decision-making through scientific data practices.  
Emma Garnett (University of Exeter)

Paper short abstract:

I explore constructions and manipulations of ‘the atmosphere’ by a team of multi-disciplinary researchers, considering the ways in which modelled atmospheres incorporate both a material sense of the world through data, and a performative space for the playing out of environmental politics.

Paper long abstract:

I explore constructions, manipulations and visualisations of the atmosphere by a team of multi-disciplinary researchers working on an environmental health project studying the relationship between air pollution and health in the UK. I begin by tracing the ways in which 'the atmosphere' is made, sensed and known through computer simulation models, highlighting the theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of this process. I then use a policy engagement meeting to explore how articulations of the atmosphere emerged and were shaped by the science-policy interface, and how these relations then played out through modelling practices. For example, the atmospheric relations mobilised in the running of simulations were configured by pre-conceived future scenarios and climate change predictions, and thereby orientated towards policy action. Indeed, the atmospheric chemistry modellers manipulated their simulations according to requests from policy makers for certain kinds of data, with specific affordances and capacities, and which would allow for the making of 'evidence-based' environmental decisions. I therefore consider modelled atmospheres as particular kinds of scientific objects, which incorporate a material sense of the world through data whilst offering a performative space through which environmental politics can play out in tangible and prescriptive ways.

Panel P09
Knowing the atmosphere: exploring conceptual and practical dimensions of weather and climate knowledge for environmental decision-making
  Session 1