Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
Accepted Paper:
Co-environing the ocean and climate: The Argo program
Adam Wickberg
(KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
This paper analyzes the history of how oceans and climate were connected through new data practices towards the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. It discusses the case of the Argo program of autonomous floats as an example of how the ocean was environed.
Paper long abstract:
The Argo program coordinates an array of autonomous floats that roam the upper 2000 meters of the ice-free ocean, collecting data on currents, temperature and salinity. The data are communicated in near-real time via satellites to designated receiving centers around the world, where the raw data are made available for immediate purposes, such as weather forecasting, before being checked for quality, made user-friendly and eventually published as high-quality data for scientific uses, including climate studies. Since its inception in the late 1990s, the Argo program has dramatically increased the amount of ocean data that is collected and made available for scientists and others to use. This paper approaches the Argo program through a twofold theoretical perspective, using the concepts of environing technologies from environmental history and environmental narratives from ecocriticism. From this theoretical starting point, I analyze how Argo data and practices environ the deep ocean in ways that connect the ocean to climate science and policy. I consider how this climate-centered view of the ocean impacts the formation of marine environmental narratives, including the role of the Argo program in formulating contested and competing views on deep-sea sustainability.