Amateur observations of atmospheric phenomena during the IGY

Abstract

The fiftieth anniversary of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) provides an opportunity to look back at a scientific program which is now almost forgotten. Many of the research fields of the IGY required large numbers of observers around the world, far more than could be provided by the staffs of established institutions and university research groups. It became necessary to recruit men and women from outside the normal scientific net, but with an interest inastronomy and the physics of the planet.Sydney Chapman, L.V. Berkner, M. Nicolet, V.V. Beloussov, J. Coulomb, E. Larsen, and others took a leading role in the planning of the IGY. Chapman had a personal interest in luminous phenomena of the upper atmosphere. One focus of Chapman's research had been collecting historical observations of auroras at low and middle latitude areas such as the Indian subcontinent, Greece, and the Pacific Ocean. He therefore consulted specialists such as C.W. Gartlein (Cornell University), James Paton (Edinburgh), Cuno Hoffmeister (Sonneberg), and N. Grisin, V.V. Sharonov, I.A. Khvostikov, earlier from the USSR, and others to plan and coordinate an international program of observations of auroras and other luminous phenomena of the upper atmosphere. At about this time his interest in noctilucent clouds (NLCs) was also suddenly aroused by a review containing photographs by George Witt (Sweden) that appeared in the journal Tellus.