Abstract
As the limitations of climate change communication, which focusses on the dissemination of scientific knowledge has become apparent, climate studies scholars have called for richer, less reductive approaches. This includes adopting more emotive language, which is sensitive to the myriad ways communities understand and know their own environ and climate. While on the surface, the recent emotive turn of popular discourse on anthropogenic climate change seems to heed this call, the communication approaches most commonly associated with these developments are limited in their ability to reach diverse communities. This article attempts to address this gap and contribute to affecting action in a manner which is both proportionate with the immediate climate risk, but also successful in engaging a range of groups within the community. Exploring the links between weather lore, cultural identity, and memory in shaping individual perceptions of climate risks, the article asks how such identities, both at the community and individual level, might have informed indifference or inaction with regards to climate change. Adopting a style that situates the author within the narrative, this essay uses Manchester, England and its popular reputation as ‘the rainy city' to explore these themes. Charting the history of the popularization of the meteorological myth that Manchester receives excessive amounts of rainfall, the article exposes how this folklore is bound up in regional cultural identity and civic pride, first as “Cottonopolis” at the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution, and then in the city's post-industrial rebranding as a place known for music, comedy, and sporting successes. In drawing these threads through community, familial and individual narratives, the article concludes by outlining how we might better utilize affection and cultural identification with local environments and weather to promote future behavior change.
Highlights
In revisiting the “ancient vocabulary” of climate, such work urges us to broaden our interrogation of climate—and in turn climate change—beyond the reductive lens of the atmospheric sciences, to explore how climate is an integral component of both individual and community identities
If you’re from Manchester, when you travel it is inevitable that three topics will come up when you speak to people
For as a somewhat self-confessed weather geek, I know that Manchester really is not that wet
Summary
Climate studies scholars from across the humanities have explored the abstract nature and plurality of definitions the term “climate” holds for different communities across time and space (Nerlich et al, 2010; Fleming and Jankovic, 2011; Hulme, 2011a). As the historian of science, James Fleming argues:. Climate involves themes of dominant empires, colonial pride and pioneer mentalities; popular, religious and racial sentiments; imposed and imported ideologies; and resilience to extreme conditions of flood and drought as embodied in agricultural and technological practices. Climate is both intimate and universal, involving local experiences of global change (Fleming, 2015).”
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