Remote-Sensing Satellite Data and the Making of Global Climate in Europe, 1980s-2000s.

ongoing

Answers to how to manage the urgent climate crisis depend on perceptions of global climate. Knowing how they came to be is necessary to open up new possibilities about ways to face it. CLIMASAT aims at establishing a truly comprehensive narrative that integrates various spheres of knowledge to understand how global climate discourses, policies and practices came into being in the approximate 1980s-2000s Europe. To do so, CLIMASAT substantially places the production, circulation and use of data generated with Earth-orbiting satellites at the centre of historical analysis. Indeed, since the 1980s, much of our scientific, practical and political knowledge about global climate has been increasingly compiled with satellite data, in a process of constitutive co-production. Then processes of data production, circulation and use may have played a role in knowledge-making. CLIMASAT identifies 5 interrelated spheres of knowledge involved in satellite data production, circulation and use: science and technology, economy, regulation, communication, and diplomacy. It sets out the hypothesis that it was through their mutual intersections, as they materialised in processes of data production, circulation and use, that certain perceptions and actions about global climate were collectively negotiated, shared, maintained and used. It focuses the empirical analysis on 3 European satellite programs (Meteosat, Topex/Poseidon, ERS) that provided data on extreme weather events, sea level, and ozone. It demands an interdisciplinary methodology grounded on material and transnational history. In times of growing public concern regarding our actions on the climate crisis, CLIMASAT delivers unparalleled information and critical analysis about how satellite data-informed perceptions of global climate were made, which is relevant not only for researchers in academia but also for policy-makers and engaged citizens.