Imaging the spectral earth: An historical epistemology of scientific instrumentation and geographic perception in urban climatology

This dissertation concerns the historical formation of a single concept within the geographic science of climatology: the "urban heat island effect." Defined broadly in the climatologic literature as an artificial warming induced by urbanization, the heat island effect is often referred to as the most well documented example of anthropogenic climate change. It is argued here that inquiry into this phenomenon experienced rather dramatic changes in concert with the Postwar introduction of thermal infrared technologies into climatologic practice. By describing transformations in instrumentation and methodology specific to the heat island concept, the research documents one instance of the emergence during the second half of the twentieth century of a new form of perception within geographic inquiry, and aims in this way to provide some insight into the historical and epistemological relations between perception, technology, and the formation of environmental-scientific concepts.