Historical, Technological, and Scientific Evolution of Aerial Photography in the Study of Weather and Climate

Just after dawn on a cold and drizzly day in the fall of 1858, the man the French simply knew as Nadar was making final preparations for a balloon launch that would carry him above the village of Petit-Bicêtre. After overcoming several last minute technical difficulties, he climbed into the balloon’s basket, which he outfitted as a portable darkroom. In the basket he hung a tent to reduce the outside light, letting just enough in so he could coat his glass plate with light-sensitized collodion and operate his camera. He controlled the camera’s exposure by simply removing and covering the lens with a cap. After lift-off, he quickly ascended to 80 meters. Perched above the town in his floating photographic laboratory, he made a single exposure. He then shouted, “Descend!” His ground assistants pulled tethered balloon back to the surface. He then rushed to the nearby inn to develop his image and proclaimed, “What happiness. There is something!” Nadar made the first aerial photograph, a historic achievement that forever changed the way that we experience our planet. Soon after Nadar’s achievement, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “the aeronaut has sought to work the two miracles at once, of rising against the force of gravity, and picturing the face of the earth beneath him without brush or pencil.” The two “miracles”―balloon travel and photography―provided a new dimension for scientists, a dimension that would enable them to visually study weather phenomena from a vantage point that would dramatically advance our understanding of the atmosphere.

In this talk, I will discuss the historical, technological and scientific evolution of aerial photography in the study of weather and climate. This is a fascinating story about the marriage between technology and science, a marriage that was arranged by scientists who designed and executed the experiments that began on balloon platforms in the nineteenth century and that continue on satellite platforms today. Among the questions that will frame my talk are the following: What were the early challenges in photographing weather from aerial platforms? Were there cameras specifically designed for aerial photography? Can aerial photographs of meteorological phenomena be used as data and, if so, is the data reliable?