6 - American Meteorologists Speak Out, c. 1850–1910

Summary

Counter to the science of forest meteorology, prominent meteorologists in the United States held that climate was unchanged despite more than two centuries of forest clearing. In examining patterns of temperature and precipitation, they could not find a signal of forest influences, and their theories of large-scale atmospheric dynamics, likewise, did not accommodate forests. It was this idea that American meteorologists embraced as the forest-rainfall controversy exploded onto the public consciousness. Finding no evidence of climate change where there had been deforestation, they dismissed the idea that forests influence climate. Their voices prevailed, but the dismissal of forest influences proved to be too rigid. The science rose again in the latter half of the twentieth century as atmospheric scientists considered anthropogenic climate change. In developing their theories and mathematical models of climate, these scientists discovered that they needed to account for forests and other vegetation. The science of forest-climate influences, so resoundingly rejected at the turn of the twentieth century, has now been reinvented as forests are again seen as a means to improve climate.