Growing Deserts and Shrinking Glaciers: The Desiccation Debates and Climate Change in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract This paper explores late nineteenth‐century debates on climatic changes in Central Asia. Scholars recently have begun to address the history of climate and climate sciences in Russia, but while this research has presented important insights, little still is known about how Russian scholars and practitioners observed and interpreted climatic changes in specific environments. In particular, we do not know how glaciers—important markers and icons of climate change today—were linked conceptually and empirically to the emerging Russian climate debates. This article will address this gap in research by examining how Russian scientists attempted to reconcile debates on the desiccation of Central Asia with the growing number of reports from expeditions about glacier changes in the region at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While intellectuals in Europe were worried about a new glaciation of the world at the turn of the century, scientists and explorers in Central Asia discovered that some glaciers in the Tian Shan and Pamir Mountains were receding rather than advancing. This article sheds light on how Russian scientists made sense of these environmental changes.