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Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses how different scales of meteorological knowledge on Central Asia might be brought together in a fruitful way to enable substantiated statements about past weather events in the region, climate changes, and the dealings of local communities with these.

Paper long abstract:

Central Asian climate and weather deemed the colonial administration a challenge because of its propensity for drought and sand drifts. Progressive desertification due to frequent drought and sand reclaiming previously cultivated lands was recognised as a problem by contemporaries, even those who were not adherents of the desertification hypothesis. By the 1880s, twenty-seven meteorological stations had been opened in Russian Turkestan. Chief astronomer Franz von Schwarz, the geologists Alexander Lehmann and Willi Rickmer Rickmers, the orientalist Nikolaĭ Vladimirovich Khanykov, and others included meteorological data in their respective books, but in spite of their many pages of meteorological data, there has been no attempt so far to consolidate, compare and make systematic further use of this.

These works are not easily usable. Firstly, because weather stations were only put up in Russian Turkestan but not in Khiva, Bukhara or the Kazakh Steppe, data coverage is porous. The effects of zonation or (lack of) wind cover are difficult to estimate. Secondly, because these authors used different scales and measuring units, usually, their observations are completely detached from one another and from information that we find in indigenous, mostly narrative, sources. Nevertheless, their data merits a closer look from a historical perspective. In this presentation, I want to discuss how these different scales of meteorological knowledge might be brought together in a fruitful way to enable substantiated statements about past weather events in Central Asia, climate changes, and the dealings of local communities with these.