A View of the Development of Geostationary Imagers through the lens of BAMS
A collection of 60 BAMS covers spanning the years, to highlight the rapid advance of imaging from the geostationary orbit, is shown above (a version that loops more slowly can be seen here). The first cover is the first of BAMS, in January of 1920, while the second, from January of 1957 is the first time artificial ‘satellite’ was in a title of a BAMS article. The third image, from November of 1957, is a remarkable article on potential uses of satellites. This included both qualitative uses: (1) Clouds, (2) Cloud Movements, (3) Drift of Atmospheric Pollutants, (4) State of the Surface of the Sea (or of Large Lakes), (5) Visibility or Atmospheric Transparency to Light — and quantitative uses: (1) Albedo, (2) Temperature of a Level at or Near the Tropopause, (3) Total Moisture Content., (4) Total Ozone Content, (5) Surface (Ground-Air Interface) Temperature, and (6) Snow Cover. Early covers showcase rockets, balloons and high-altitude aircraft to prepare the way to human space travel (Gemini, Apollo, etc.), polar-orbiters (TIROS, NIMBUS, VHRR, NOAA, etc.) and finally geostationary orbit (ATS-1, ATS-3, SMS, GOES, Meteosat, INSAT, Himawari, etc.).
Reasons to look back at the BAMS covers:
- As part of the 100th anniversary, the AMS has digitized the BAMS “cover to cover”, including the ads
- 50th anniversary of NOAA (October)
- By looking back, we can understand how quickly remote sensing as progressed
Interactive web page, with links to the original “front matter”.
Montage of select BAMS covers
Note: All cover images are from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.