Paper short abstract:

This paper combines analysis of recent uses of imperial representations of the Karakoram alongside a genealogy of the colonial and postcolonial concept of an ‘anomalous’ climate. It argues that othering particular climates was and is also a process of criticising alternative ways of knowing climate.

Paper long abstract:

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the enormous glaciers of the Karakoram located between the Russian and British empires in Central and South Asia became object of innovative climate theorising. The ideas and representations that resulted have enjoyed long afterlives, informing the development in recent decades of the idea that the relatively stable mass of these icy masses warrants a special status: ‘the Karakoram anomaly’. This paper combines analysis of recent uses of imperial representations of the Karakoram alongside a critical assessment of the recapitulation of the mid-nineteenth century notion of the climatic ‘anomaly’. On the basis of these paired case studies and their convergence in 21st-century glaciology and climatology of High Asia, the paper advances three main arguments. First, othering particular climates was and is also a process of criticising alternative ways of knowing climate. Second, the occlusion of non-Western knowledge tradition in recent climate sciences makes them, in a specific respect, more colonial than actual colonial sciences of climate. And finally, framing climate as ‘anomalous’ implicitly requires particular types of temporal and spatial scaling that should be exposed to critical reflection.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the “Karakoram anomaly” through the lens of Thomas Kuhn’s work on anomalies in science and their implications. It connects the “Karakoram anomaly” to the concept of the Third Pole, thereby analysing the geopolitics of past and present knowledge production.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the “Karakoram anomaly”, a recent debate in cryosphere sciences. On a global scale, glaciers have lost mass, thinned and retreated since the end of the Little Ice Age due to atmospheric warming. However, scholars noted a major regional exception to this trend in Northern Pakistan with expanding rather than shrinking glaciers over the last 20 years. Subsequent research demonstrated that this exception had a much wider geographical reach, and that stable or growing glaciers also were identified in the adjacent Pamir Mountains, the Kunlun Shan and on the Tibetan plateau. The exception is termed an “anomaly”, as stable or growing glaciers present a conundrum to the scientifically established link between glacier melt and rising air temperature. In this paper, I analyse the emergence of the “Karakoram anomaly” in cryosphere sciences and link it to the concept of the Third Pole. “Third Pole” refers geographically to the mountain ranges of South and Central Asia. The concept made its first appearance in scholarly debates at roughly the same time as did the "Karakoram anomaly". The paper argues that scientific debates about the “Karakoram anomaly” reveal how Kuhn's “normal science” of the glacier-climate linkage is currently operating, and how this linkage takes shape within specific past and present imperial formations that create new planetary imaginaries. On the case of the Third Pole, it becomes visible how these imaginaries are the result of interwoven discourses of geosciences and geopolitics.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the ‘mysterious’ lake of Lop Nor in Central Asia became a key site for imperial scientific debates around climatic stability, desiccation, and changing habitability around 1900. In turn, it considers the role of geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences.

Paper long abstract:

Around the turn of the twentieth century, rumours of large lake in Central Asia provided the material for a vexing geographical problem. That Lop Nor existed – or at least once had – was suggested by information in Chinese maps and the accounts of Ptolemy. However, the lake itself proved elusive – and astoundingly – it did not always appear to have been found in the same place. Attracting romanticised imperial imaginaries like ‘mysterious’ and ‘wandering,’ Lop Nor became a key site for speculations about climatic stability and change. This paper considers investigations by Russian, British and Swedish explorers, as well as the key roles of Central Asian brokers (such as Ördek, who located Loulan, the ancient Silk Road city that had graced the shores of the lake and been abandoned in the face of changing habitability). In turn, I examine how geographers like Peter Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington incorporated the lake into wider (and sometimes bombastic) theories of desiccation, climate change and migration. As an evocative ‘mystery’ at a time when imperial imaginaries of the Silk Roads were in the making, Lop Nor also allows for an examination of the role of geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences and the development of climatography as a discipline. More widely, I argue that historicising environmentally determinist imperial categories – and understanding their legacies – is essential to countering a recurrence of racist and neo-determinist thinking in the face of the current climate crisis (especially in language around climate-induced migration).

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how debates on desiccation in Central Asia that emerged in the late 19th century continued until the 1950s and increasingly revealed political dimensions as glacier retreat became more obvious. It asks how scientists defended their vision of climate dynamics in the regions.

Paper long abstract:

During the end of the 19th century scholars of Central Asia, such Ellsworth Huntington, Aleksandr Voeikov and Lev Berg embarked on a debate whether the region was drying out. At the origin of their discussions stood the observation of retreating glaciers. In view of recurring droughts, people feared that deserts were encroaching. While the debate somewhat slowed down in the early 20th century, the fears stayed as glaciers kept retreating. The paper traces how scientists made sense of the environmental changes throughout the 20th century and how the debate on a possible desiccation kept returning and was rebuked despite the obvious symptoms of an increasing shortage of water in the long term. Scientific discussions about the future amount of water from glaciers were closely entangled with ideas of technological fixes and dreams of eternal economic productivity in the eastern part of the Soviet empire – entanglements that determined the success of the theories in the public space.

Paper short abstract:

Using data from Kazakh archives, drought series and parameters in the grain-growing regions of Northern Kazakhstan in the 20th century are analyzed with two questions: 1) How drought episodes are related to agro-economic change? 2) Did drought become more intense in the course of the century?

Paper long abstract:

In this communication, I will present the results of an attempt at reconstructing drought series and parameters in the grain-growing regions of Northern Kazakhstan in the 20th century. Drought duration, distribution and intensity will be determined; and drought-related phenomena like dust storms, heat waves and fires will be taken into account. The data used comes from the Kazakh Meteorological Service and regional Kazakh archives.

This reconstruction pursues two objectives: 1) to link up the drought episodes with agro-economic change in the regions—the extension and reduction of cultivated areas and the change in agrotechnologies, themselves dependent upon social and political transformations; 2) to study whether droughts have become more severe and recurrent toward the end of the century in Norther Kazakhstan.