Puzzled or Punk'd? Weather Photos in Social Media

The proliferation of smartphone cameras, combined with social media photo sharing, has resulted in a tremendous increase of weather images submitted to TV stations via uploads, tweets, email, posts, shares, and weather apps. These pictures greatly and positively serve as confirmation of storm and weather events, and they also occasionally provide excellent examples of atmospheric optics and phenomena that were once only theorized or rarely captured on photographic film. At times, weather photos simply capture the beauty and complexity of the atmosphere, displayed in sometimes fleeting moments.

However, social media use of weather photos may have non-productive or negative outcomes for meteorologists and broadcasters. Pictures may be posted or shared without identifying information and then be taken out of context, or assigned an incorrect location, or an incorrect date, resulting in unintentional misinformation that may increase with further distribution. This happens too when a photo is posted and described by opinion or emotion, without meteorological foundation. At other times, people may share a photo that was artistically enhanced without noting it as such, resulting in an exaggeration of reality. In the worst case, weather photos are posted and shared with the intent to deceive, fool, or "punk" the viewer.

Weather broadcasters and webmasters must use a keen eye to avoid the pitfalls of perpetuating weather pictures that are not what they seem to be. In this presentation, we examine some of the most common misinterpretations of weather photos, along with some of the persistent hoax photos. We also review unintentional photo distortion and camera lens artifacts, along with the physics behind real but rare sights.