1096 



150 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



sented an even more remarkable interplay between science and politics 

 on a global scale. To understand how the Global Weather Experiment 

 came to pass, one should consider the development of its parent pro- 

 gram — GARP — in the context of the history of international coopera- 

 tion in the atmospheric sciences. 



BACKGROUND 



Of all scientific endeavors, those dealing with weather and climate are 

 surely the most international in character. Air flows freely over political 

 boundaries. The same storm may bring rain to London and snow to 

 Stockholm. The hurricane that ravages Cuba today may irrigate Mexico 

 tomorrow. Even the climate of Siberia is moderated by the distant but 

 vast ocean. Thus, exchange of weather information between nations 

 goes back many centuries to the circulation of ships' logs between 

 mariners.^ However, it was only in 1872 that a formal international 

 system for data exchange was organized with the formation of the Inter- 

 national Meteorological Organization (IMO). Following World War I, 

 the International Commission for Air Navigation took an interest in the 

 exchange of aviation weather data, and the International Union of 

 Geodesy and Geophysics, a nongovernmental member of the Interna- 

 tional Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), concerned itself with 

 meteorological research. After World War II, the IMO's functions were 

 inherited by the World Meterological Organization (WMO), an in- 

 tergovernmental specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). 



The point of the above chronology is simply to emphasize that an ac- 

 tive and effective infrastructure for international activities in the at- 

 mospheric sciences has existed for a longer time than have many of the 

 world's nations. While the Global Atmospheric Research Program 

 eventually became grafted onto this infrastructure, its genesis lay in a 

 unique convergence of scientific and political circumstances. ^ In the 

 period around 1960, many circumstances favored major forward steps 

 in meterology. Advances were being made in the design of 

 mathematical models of the atmosphere, and electronic computers were 

 becoming sufficiently powerful to implement these models. The launch 

 of Sputnik in 1957 and its many successors had demonstrated that the 

 earth could be observed in its entirety from space at feasible cost. At the 

 same time, the postwar hopes for a world of peace and universal 

 cooperation were being dashed by the emergence of the Cold War. On 

 assuming the presidency in 1961, John F. Kennedy faced a world rapidly 

 solidifying into two hostile camps— the first brick in the Berlin Wall was 

 laid in August of that year. Moreover, the opposing camp was 



