During the Republic of China period, modern universities in China began to take shape, each establishing various disciplines with distinct purposes. Given that China’s economy was predominantly agrarian at the time, agricultural education garnered significant attention, leading many universities to establish meteorological stations due to the strong link between meteorology and agriculture. However, early developments were primarily confined to meteorological data recording, with limited research applications. As Chinese meteorologists emerged, departments of meteorology or geosciences incorporating meteorological studies gradually appeared, facilitating the establishment of additional meteorological stations and fostering research tailored to China’s unique meteorological conditions. The emphasis on university-based meteorological stations during this period was closely tied to cultivating future meteorological experts in China. Moreover, the original intent of universities to introduce modern Western meteorology merits deeper exploration. In summary, this article advocates for examining the role of meteorological knowledge in modern Chinese education through the establishment of meteorological stations during the Republic of China era.

Few writings on climate have been so admired and reviled as the 1915 Climate and Civilization, in which geographer Ellsworth Huntington presented a grand theory about the global relationship between race, climate, and civilizational progress. That text (alongside others) is a major source of the anxiety that scholars continue to experience over the specter of “environmental determinism.” This paper draws on the unpublished records and correspondence of Huntington himself, as well as published writings by other scholars, to reconstruct the creation and reception of Climate and Civilization with a focus on what is arguably the book’s most controversial element: its effort to map the “distribution of human energy on the basis of climate” to “the distribution of civilization.” The story of these contentious maps involves such diverse thinkers as the anthropologist Franz Boas and the economist William Ripley, but I focus on China, both as a source of inspiration for Huntington and as a destination where his book faced mixed reception and inspired new ways of thinking about the relationship between climate and humanity. Naturally, Chinese climate scientists like Zhu Kezhen and Lu Jiong resented the claim that China was less civilized than the Euro-American world, yet they prominently cited Huntington in generating their own theories. While Climate and Civilization is commonly remembered as an archetypal work of climatic determinism that was emblematic of its times, I argue that it was also a bellwether that revealed widespread resistance to some of its stronger claims from the very beginning.

In traditional China, the beginning of the four seasons was determined by the 24 Solar Terms, a method that combined astronomy with phenology. At the beginning of the 20th century, in response to the influx of global knowledge, Chinese climatologists needed to modernize these traditional systems. Drawing from Chinese cultural traditions, temperature was selected as a key factor. Influenced by Humboldt and Supan's theories, 10°C became the lower limit for spring and autumn temperatures, while 22°C was set as the upper limit to consider the integration with traditional phenology markers. This study indicates that in the quantification of the criteria for the four seasons, climatologists have attempted to broaden the applicability of these standards in an effort to bridge the gap between local and global knowledge. This endeavor has had both successes and failures. Concurrently, it was observed that through the process of standard quantification, the regions with distinct seasons shifted from the Yellow River Basin, as indicated by the traditional 24 Solar Terms, to the Yangtze River Basin, where the capital was located at the time, demonstrating the positive impact of global knowledge on the construction of modern nations.

In the early twentieth century, the development of marine meteorology in Asia was deeply shaped by the interventions of multiple foreign powers. Western countries, notably Britain and France, established meteorological stations across the region, laying the groundwork for an emerging network of meteorological research. Within this context, China and Japan gradually embarked on their own marine meteorological endeavors. Adopting the perspective of the politics of technology, this study first examines how Japan, driven by military and colonial ambitions, constructed a colonial technological network that transformed meteorological data into strategic resources to advance its maritime interests in the Far East. In contrast, under conditions of technological disadvantage, Chinese researchers—represented by figures such as Lü Jiong—challenged Japan’s technological dominance through scientific research. Such challenges were not only acts of scientific practice but also, to a certain extent, expressions of national sovereignty. Building on this analysis, the study further argues that the marine meteorological practices of China and Japan reflected the entanglement of multiple knowledge systems in Asia, revealing a scientific landscape marked by apparent rivalry yet underlying interconnection. This case thus illuminates the complex roles played by non-western countries and the dynamics of knowledge reproduction in the early twentieth century.