Paper short abstract:

This paper considers conceptual and practical interactions of digital weather/climate modelling with cultural worldviews, science-policy processes, and the shaping of social and environmental futures.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists have encountered and documented an extensive variety of divination, prophesy and forecasting (now digital forecasting and modelling) practices, which offer possibilities for anticipating, making sense of, and perhaps influencing social and environmental futures. Like promises, predictions can draw a shared vision of the future in the present, even if the ultimate outcome remains uncertain. Unlike predictions based on entrails or the position of stars, probabilistic scientific predictions/projections of weather and climate involve quantification of the uncertainty in the forecast. Yet we are never able to repeat the observations in a strict experimental sense. We wonder how the use of the terminology of quantification and probability influences the social status of these forecasts. Within the realm of scientific weather prediction, it is possible to identify significant types of variation, which contribute to different framings of uncertain futures: 1) different categorisations of uncertainty that decision-makers often wish to reduce and that forecasters face; 2) different models employed as tools to try to identify and address these uncertainties; 3) different types of forecast that may be prepared and communicated for different purposes, e.g. warnings of hazards and socio-economic impacts. In what different ways might forecasts precipitate intended or unintended effects on lives, livelihoods and environments? Drawing on conversations across anthropology and STS, and on ethnographic fieldwork on divination, weather forecast production and use of digital technologies (e.g. ABMs) for resource management, our paper explores the social and technical perturbations that can shift how uncertain social and environmental futures are framed and realised.