Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth's climate requires understanding interactions across vastly different scales, from molecular to planetary. This multiscalar framework has roots that extend back to the nineteenth century, emerging from the politics of empire-building in central and eastern Europe. Deborah R. Coen reveals that key elements of modern climate science developed within the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, where thinking across scales was politically essential. Under the leadership of Julius Hann in Vienna, Habsburg scientists pioneered investigations into how local winds and storms relate to the broader atmospheric circulation. Coen connects Habsburg climatology to the political and artistic endeavors of late imperial Austria, grounding the science of the atmosphere in the everyday experiences of an earlier era of globalization. The narrative positions the history of modern climate science as a history of scaling, illustrating the work involved in shifting between various frameworks for understanding the world. This perspective provides critical insights into the concepts of scale that influence contemporary thinking about the climate crisis and the potential responses to it.
