Meteorologists, sunspotters and journalists: the demise of long-range weather forecasting in the USSR, 1970s

This article contends that meteorology endured a severe crisis in the USSR in 1972. During a devastating drought this year, meteorology lost its reliability as a science able to forecast the weather many weeks and months in advance. Many professional users turned to an alternative weather forecaster, Anatolii D'iakov, who predicted the weather for the next season by observing the sun. The argument made here is threefold. First, the fundamental reason for the crisis in long-range weather forecasting lies in the disruption of a bond of trust between meteorologists and the government, built on unfulfilled prospects of rapid and sudden, but unrealistic, progress in long-range forecasting to help agriculturalists of the steppe regions. Meteorologists could not fulfil the high expectations put in them. Second, journalists covering rural matters were instrumental in extolling D'iakov's alternative forecasts and in lambasting 'official' meteorology; however, they did not succeed in convincing the leadership to purge forecasters and reorganize meteorology. The meteorologists preserved their autonomy to deal with D'iakov. Third, the article reflects on the consequences of the failure of long-term forecasting for the status of science within Soviet governance and ideology.