Early History of Climate Modeling in the British Meteorological Office

Abstract

The study of climate and its change had traditionally been descriptive and regionally oriented and regarded as a minor branch of meteorology. With advances in compu-ting technology, however, climate studies gradually moved towards highly mathe-matical endeavors. By the mid-1970s, climate research became dominated by dy-namical meteorologists, atmospheric physicists, and physical oceanographers armed with complex numerical modeling as a principal methodology. The observational studies of climate, as well as simple climate modeling studies focusing on climate sensitivity and feedback processes, continued to play an essential role in raising the issue of climate change - both natural and anthropogenic - in the 1960s and early 1970s. On the other hand, many meteorologists firmly believed that climate and its change could only be properly studied using numerical models of the large-scale atmospheric circulation - i.e., general circulation models (GCMs). This tendency was particularly strong in Britain. From early on, the British Meteorological Office devoted much of its climate research efforts to developing GCMs. This paper traces the history of GCM developments at the British Meteorological Office from the 1950s to the mid-1970s and also explores how particular styles of scientific practice, disciplinary traditions, institutional cultures, and broader political environments shaped these developments.