climate Review How Do the Cultural Dimensions of Climate Shape Our Understanding of Climate Change? Jason Alexandra 1,2   Citation: Alexandra, J. How Do the Cultural Dimensions of Climate Shape Our Understanding of Climate Change? Climate 2021, 9, 63. https:// doi.org/10.3390/cli9040063 Academic Editors: Steven McNulty and Thomas Beery Received: 28 February 2021 Accepted: 8 April 2021 Published: 10 April 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Alexandra and Associates, 16 Homestead Road Eltham, Melbourne, VIC 3095, Australia; jason@alexandra-consulting.com 2 School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia Abstract: Climatic events express the dynamics of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, but are profoundly personal and social in their impacts, representation and comprehension. This paper explores how knowledge of the climate has multiple scales and dimensions that intersect in our experience of the climate. The climate is objective and subjective, scientific and cultural, local and global, and personal and political. These divergent dimensions of the climate frame the philosophical and cultural challenges of a dynamic climate. Drawing on research into the adaptation in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin, this paper outlines the significance of understanding the cultural dimensions of the changing climate. This paper argues for greater recognition of the ways in which cultures co-create the climate and, therefore, that the climate needs to be recognised as a socio-natural hybrid. Given the climate’s hybrid nature, research should aim to integrate our understanding of the social and the natural dimensions of our relationships to a changing climate. Keywords: critical realism; cultural adaptation; custodial ethics; socio-natural hybrids; knowledge politics; climate subjectivities; climate co-production 1. Introduction Each time we take in information about the weather from forecasts delivered via television, radio, the press, books, posters or the Internet, we are receiving the product of an extraordinary cooperative, international effort to understand the Earth’s systems and their dynamics, which frame our understanding of the world [1]. A global network of instrumentation observations, technologies, models, theories, data and communications involving people, technologies, skills and knowhow produce these forecasts, contributing to our comprehension of the planetary systems at the local and global scale [2]. When we use these forecasts to make decisions about our work and life, we are processing and acting on this information, responding to nature (as in natural phenomena) and the culturally constructed system of representing and understanding nature [3]. We are part of enormous cultural and scientific information processing systems that construct the knowing and governing of the climate via technological, scientific and social networks [4]. This paper argues that knowledge of the climate has multiple scales and dimensions. The climate is objective and subjective, scientific and cultural, local and global and personal and political. This paper explores these contextual and cultural dimensions of the climate. It seeks to expand the scope of definitions of ‘the climate’ and examine some of the philosophical and cultural challenges posed by a dynamic climate. The central idea is that climate change is an objective fact and a subjective reality that frames our understanding and experience of the world. The question central to this investigation is: how do the cultural dimensions of the climate, including the subjectivities involved, shape our understanding of climate change? The opening up of debate around these questions is not arguing that climate change is entirely relative, or merely a matter of belief, rather than an objective fact about the Earth’s systems changing. Instead, it is querying whether greater recognition of the co-existence Climate 2021, 9, 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli9040063 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/climate