From terrestrial weather to space weather through the history of scintillation

Emily F. Kerrison; John Morgan; Rajan Chhetri; Ron D. Ekers

REVIEW 3 major objections 5 minor 18 references

From terrestrial weather to space weather through the history of scintillation

T0 review · 3 major / 5 minor · reviewed 2026-08-11 · deepseek-v4-flash

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Pith's one-line read Twinkling stars link ancient weather lore to space weather.

desk verdict A well-written historical review with an accurate modern IPS section, but the continuity claim rests on thin sourcing for ancient and Indigenous traditions. read the letter →

arxiv 2412.19816 v1 pith:ALMV2GRH submitted 2024-12-13 physics.space-ph astro-ph.IMastro-ph.SRphysics.hist-ph

Emily F. Kerrison , Ron D. Ekers , John Morgan , Rajan Chhetri This is my paper · ORCID

classification physics.space-phastro-ph.IMastro-ph.SRphysics.hist-ph

keywords scintillationinterplanetarysolarwindspaceweatherhistoryofastronomyIndigenousremotesensingradio

verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

Scintillation is the stochastic variation in the phase and amplitude of light or radio waves passing through a turbulent medium, and this paper argues that people have been using it as a remote-sensing tool for millennia. The authors trace a continuous tradition from Indigenous oral cultures in Alaska, South America, and Australia, and from the Ancient Greek poet Aratus, who read strong stellar twinkling as a sign of approaching storms, through Renaissance and early modern debates about whether the twinkle originates in the eye, the star, or the atmosphere, to the twentieth-century discovery of interplanetary scintillation (IPS), which today constrains solar-wind parameters and tracks space weather from the ground. The paper's claim is that modern space-weather monitoring is the latest chapter in an unbroken history of using twinkling sources to predict the environment without leaving the ground. A sympathetic reader would care because this recasts a sophisticated radio technique as part of a long, multicultural human practice, and it highlights that even ancient weather lore rests on a physically sound connection between stellar scintillation and atmospheric turbulence.

What carries the argument

The central object is scintillation itself: the stochastic variation in the phase and amplitude of a wave after it passes through a turbulent medium. In the optical case the medium is Earth's atmosphere; in interplanetary scintillation it is the solar wind; in interstellar scintillation it is the interstellar medium. The paper uses the physical identity of the phenomenon across wavelengths and epochs as the thread connecting ancient weather lore to modern space weather, and it stresses the measurable properties that make the effect a quantitative probe: the timescale of the variations (about ten seconds for ionospheric scintillation, seconds for IPS, hours or days for interstellar scintillation) and the angular-size dependence (sources smaller than about one arcsecond scintillate, which is why compact radio sources are the targets). The continuity of the phenomenon, not any single instrument or theory, is what carries the argument.

What would settle it

A detailed philological and ethnographic check of the sources: if the 'dancing,' 'laughing,' or 'talking' star passages in the cited Yup'ik, Mocoví, Kamilaroi, Wardaman, and Aratus texts describe mythology or aesthetics rather than literal storm forecasting, the continuity claim collapses. A quantitative check would test the ancient rule against modern data by comparing scintillation strength with subsequent storm occurrence.

Watch

Extended reading notes

Core claim

The paper's central claim is that scintillation has a continuous, multicultural history as a predictive remote-sensing tool, from ancient storm warnings to modern solar-wind monitoring. On the paper's account, the Yup'ik, Mocoví, Kamilaroi, and Wardaman peoples described stars as dancing, laughing, or talking, and treated stronger scintillation as an omen of an impending storm; Aratus's Phaenomena, written around 270 BCE, similarly warns that when starlight dims and becomes wavering, a storm is coming. The authors argue this predictive use predates the scientific understanding of the effect, which went through stages of misattribution — Aristotle's distance-based explanation, da Vinci's optical illusion, Tycho and Kepler's intrinsic-source idea — before Hooke and Newton returned to the atmosphere as the cause. The modern chapter starts with Margaret Clarke's 1964 thesis, which contained the first recorded IPS data and correctly identified the solar corona as the scattering screen, followed by Hewish's 1964 Nature paper establishing IPS as a tool for measuring compact sources. Today, the paper reports, ground-based IPS arrays constrain solar wind speeds, detect coronal mass ejections and stream interaction regions, and feed heliospheric models, using the same physical process that once served as a storm warning.

Load-bearing premise

The paper assumes that the surviving oral traditions and ancient texts are faithful records of real predictive practices, rather than poetic metaphor or modern interpretation, and that strong stellar scintillation genuinely correlates with approaching storms.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

The predictive use of scintillation predates modern astronomy, so ground-based space-weather monitoring can be understood as a continuation of an ancient remote-sensing tradition rather than a new idea.
If stellar scintillation can detect atmospheric turbulence before a storm, as Sofieva (2013) indicates, then the old folk heuristic 'strong twinkling means bad weather' is physically grounded, not merely superstitious.
IPS observations work from the ground and can be made with instruments shared with astronomical research, such as the Murchison Widefield Array and ASKAP, so expanding space-weather monitoring can piggyback on existing facilities.
Because IPS constrains solar wind speeds and detects coronal mass ejections, continued IPS observing directly improves forecasts of space weather at Earth.
IPS can simultaneously probe the scattering solar wind and the compact background sources behind it, so the same dataset serves both heliospheric and astrophysical science.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

A quantitative extension the authors do not pursue: the historical rule 'stronger twinkling means an approaching storm' could be tested against modern scintillation-monitoring data and meteorological reanalysis to measure how skillful the ancient heuristic actually is.
The paper's evidence implies that many other Indigenous and folk traditions may have linked stellar twinkling to weather; a systematic ethnographic survey could recover more examples before they are lost.
The repeated cycle of rediscovery — predictive use, then misattribution to the source, then recognition of the scattering medium — suggests other phenomena, such as aurorae or zodiacal light, may have similar histories that would reward the same survey approach.

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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Desk Editor's Note

read the letter

Quick take: this is a short historical review for an IAU proceedings volume, not a research paper. The genuinely useful part is the synthesis connecting old weather-lore about twinkling stars to modern interplanetary scintillation, and the modern half is accurate and properly credits Margaret Clarke. The early-history half is the soft spot: the continuity claim rests on secondary citations that are not quoted or located, and the authors' own hedges ('presumably', 'looks very much like', 'almost certainly') show they know it.

What's good: the modern IPS section is a compact, reliable summary. Clarke's serendipitous discovery and Hewish's follow-up are covered correctly, and the references to current MWA/ASKAP work are appropriate. The authors also do a nice job of distinguishing ionospheric, interplanetary, and interstellar scintillation. For someone outside the field, this is a pleasant orientation.

Where it's thin: the load-bearing claim is that Indigenous and Ancient Greek observers used scintillation for weather prediction, and that this is a continuous tradition. The evidence cited for the Indigenous cases is Hamacher 2019, and for Aratus it is Kidd 1997, with no direct quotes or page numbers. The stress-test note is right: if those sources are describing metaphor or literary trope rather than operational forecasting, the claimed continuity loses its foundation. The paper even signals this with 'presumably' for the meteorological mechanism and 'looks very much like' for Aratus. That is honest but it means the central narrative is much softer than the abstract implies.

Proportionately, I don't see this as a fatal flaw. The paper is a review, not a research claim. The historical continuity is presented as a survey rather than a proof. But the authors should either pull the relevant passages from Hamacher and Kidd to let readers judge, or explicitly narrow the claim to 'scintillation has been noticed and used for prediction in several cultures' rather than implying a single unbroken tradition. Your UNVERDICTED verdict is about right; this is the kind of claim that has to be checked by historians, not by the usual physics referee.

Who it's for: historians of astronomy and space-weather scientists curious about the cultural backstory. It won't change any technical practice. It deserves a serious referee at a history-of-astronomy venue; a referee should ask for the strengthened sourcing on the early parts. For a proceedings paper, this is acceptable with minor revision.

Referee Report

3 major / 5 minor

Summary. This short IAU proceedings contribution surveys the history of stellar scintillation as a remote-sensing tool, beginning with Indigenous oral traditions and Ancient Greek poetry, moving through Renaissance optics, and culminating in modern radio interplanetary scintillation (IPS) used for space weather forecasting. The authors argue that scintillation has a long, multicultural history of predictive use, first for terrestrial weather and later for space weather, and that modern IPS measurements are part of this ongoing tradition. The paper is a narrative literature review; it contains no new data, derivations, or experiments, and its main evidence is drawn from secondary sources such as Hamacher et al. (2019), Kidd (1997), and Sofieva et al. (2013).

Significance. The paper's value lies in its synthesis: it connects Indigenous knowledge, classical literature, the history of optics, and contemporary solar-wind physics, offering a cultural-historical framing that is rarely presented in the space-weather literature. The authors are transparent about some interpretive uncertainty, using hedged language such as 'presumably' and 'looks very much like' when the evidence is indirect. Because the central claim is historical and interpretive, the paper should be judged on the adequacy of its source evidence rather than on mathematical or statistical rigor; there are no fitted parameters or predictions to audit, so circularity is not a concern. If the historical continuity claim is accepted, the paper provides a useful and inclusive context for modern IPS efforts; if the early evidence is weak, the narrative's load-bearing pillars are correspondingly fragile.

major comments (3)

[Section 1] The assertion that Yup'ik, Mocoví, Kamilaroi, and Wardaman traditions used stellar scintillation specifically as a weather-prediction tool is supported only by a single reference (Hamacher et al. 2019) without direct quotations, page numbers, or discussion of alternative interpretations. This is the first pillar of the paper's continuity claim, so it needs more substantial evidence: either quote the relevant ethnographic passages or explicitly assess the confidence and possible metaphorical readings of the source.
[Section 1] The meteorological link between strong stellar scintillation and an impending storm is hedged with 'presumably' and attributed to Sofieva (2013), but the citation is to a study of atmospheric turbulence profiling, not to storm prediction. The manuscript should state precisely what Sofieva et al. demonstrated and distinguish it from the storm-forecast inference, or reframe the claim as a plausible but untested hypothesis.
[Section 1] The interpretation of Aratus's Phaenomena as evidence of Greek weather prediction rests on Kidd (1997) and is introduced with the phrase 'This looks very much like,' which signals interpretive uncertainty. Because this is the earliest written example, the authors should provide the relevant lines in translation (and ideally the Greek) and consider alternative readings, such as literary convention or religious omen, rather than treating the passage as unambiguous operational forecasting.

minor comments (5)

[Sections 1 and 3] There are typographical errors that should be corrected: 'psuedo-didactic' should be 'pseudo-didactic', 'millenia' should be 'millennia' (appears twice), and 'interferometic' should be 'interferometric'.
[Section 2] The sentence 'scientists returned to the notion that stellar scintillation might an extrinsic effect' is missing the verb 'be' before 'an extrinsic effect'.
[References and in-text citations] In the text, 'Fuller 2014' is cited, but the reference list gives three authors; the in-text citation should be 'Fuller et al. 2014'.
[Figure 1] The caption for the right-hand panel says it is 'from Chhetri (2018)' but does not give the date of the observation or the specific MWA configuration; adding these details would aid reproducibility and context.
[Section 3] The phrase 'the local Cambridge expert on ionospheric scintillation' is informal; consider specifying Hewish's role or institution for a more scholarly tone.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged · score 0.0 of 10

No circularity: this is a historical literature review with no predictive model, fitted parameters, or derivation whose output is equivalent to its input.

full rationale

The paper is a narrative survey of scintillation as a remote-sensing tool, from Indigenous oral traditions, Ancient Greek writings, Renaissance optics, to modern radio interplanetary scintillation. There is no mathematical derivation, no fitted parameter renamed as a prediction, and no uniqueness theorem invoked from the authors' prior work. The central continuity claim is supported by external citations (Hamacher 2019; Kidd 1997; Clarke 1964; Hewish 1964) and by the paper's own historical narrative, not by construction. The self-citations (Chhetri 2018; Morgan 2023; Waszewski 2023) appear only in the modern applications section to document current IPS measurements and space-weather modeling; they are not used to establish the historical thesis, so they are not load-bearing circularity. The paper's hedges such as 'presumably', 'looks very much like', and 'almost certainly' indicate evidentiary caution about ancient and oral sources, but source-interpretation uncertainty is a correctness or evidence concern, not circularity under the stated criteria. The derivation chain is therefore self-contained relative to its historical evidence, and the appropriate finding is no significant circularity, score 0.

Assumptions & free parameters 0 free parameters · 3 assumptions · 0 invented entities

No free parameters, invented entities, or mathematical axioms are used because the paper is a historical review, not a derivation. The only assumptions are about the reliability of historical and ethnographic sources, which are listed above.

assumptions (3)

domain assumption Oral traditions reported in Hamacher (2019) accurately preserve historical Indigenous knowledge of stellar scintillation and its use in weather prediction.
Section 1 bases the earliest history on these accounts; if inaccurate, the claimed continuity from Indigenous traditions is unsupported.
domain assumption The meteorological link between stellar scintillation and approaching storms is scientifically valid, as suggested by Sofieva (2013) and hedged with 'presumably'.
Section 1 connects weather prediction to atmospheric turbulence, but the causal chain is only presumed and not established in the paper.
domain assumption The historical texts (Aristotle, Aratus, Hooke, Newton) are accurately interpreted by the authors and the cited secondary sources.
Section 2 relies on these readings; misinterpretation would weaken the historical narrative, but this is a standard risk in historical scholarship.

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of From terrestrial weather to space weather through the history of scintillation." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/ALMV2GRH

@misc{pith2026241219816,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: From terrestrial weather to space weather through the history of scintillation},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/ALMV2GRH}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2412.19816}
}

read the original abstract

Recent observations of interplanetary scintillation (IPS) at radio frequencies have proved to be a powerful tool for probing the solar environment from the ground. But how far back does this tradition really extend? Our survey of the literature to date has revealed a long history of scintillating observations, beginning with the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples from around the globe, encompassing the works of the Ancient Greeks and Renaissance scholars, and continuing right through into modern optics, astronomy and space science. We outline here the major steps that humanity has taken along this journey, using scintillation as a tool for predicting first terrestrial, and then space weather without ever having to leave the ground.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2412.19816 by the authors.

**Figure 1.** Left: The earliest recorded data exhibiting IPS (Clarke 1964), Right: A typical, modern IPS dataset taken with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope with a 0.5 second sampling interval, from Chhetri (2018). IPS was first discovered serendipitously by Margaret Clarke, a PhD student studying compact sources. It was published as an appendix to her thesis, in which she correctly identified not only the angular … view at source ↗

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

18 extracted references · 18 canonical work pages

[1]

Campbell, L., 1991, Stellar scintillation and its use in atmospheric measurements, PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide, http://hdl.handle.net/2440/19571

work page 1991
[2]

Chhetri, R., Morgan, J.,et al., 2018, MNRAS, 474(4), 3937-4955

work page 2018
[3]

bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597742

Clarke, M., 1964, Measuring radio source positions, PhD Thesis, Cambridge University,https://ethos. bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597742

work page 1964
[4]

P., and Trudgett, M., 2014,Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 3-27

Fuller, R.S., Norris, R. P., and Trudgett, M., 2014,Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 3-27

work page 2014
[5]

W., Barsa, J.,et al., 2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 131(1), 24-33

Hamacher, D. W., Barsa, J.,et al., 2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 131(1), 24-33

work page 2019
[6]

and Weale, R., 1949, Nat., 164, 999-1000

Hartridge, H. and Weale, R., 1949, Nat., 164, 999-1000

work page 1949
[7]

F., and Wills, D., 1964,Nat., 203, 1214-1217

Hewish, A., Scott, P. F., and Wills, D., 1964,Nat., 203, 1214-1217

work page 1964
[8]

Hotan, A.W., Bunton, J.D., et al., 2021, PASA, 38, e009

work page 2021

Show all 18 references

[9]

Jackson, B.V ., Tokumaru, M.,et al., 2023, Solar Physics, 298, 74

2023
[10]

(ed), 1997, Aratus: Phaenomena, Cambridge University Press

Kidd, D. (ed), 1997, Aratus: Phaenomena, Cambridge University Press

1997
[11]

Mejia-Ambriz, J.C., Jackson, B.V .,et al., 2015, Solar Physics, 290, 2539-2552

2015
[12]

Monaco, G., 1990, Memorie della Societ`a Astronomia Italiana, 61, 819-827

1990
[13]

Morgan, J., McCauley, P.I.,et al., 2023, Space Weather, 21, e2022SW003396

2023
[14]

Narayan, R., 1992, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 241, 151-165

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[15]

and Vernin, J., 2013,Phil

Sofieva, V .F., Dalaudier, F. and Vernin, J., 2013,Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 371, 20120174

2013
[16]

et al., 2013, PASA, 30, e007

Tingay, S.J., Goeke, R.. et al., 2013, PASA, 30, e007

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[17]

Veltman, K.H., 1986, Leonardo Studies II: Continuity and Discovery in Optics and Astronomy

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[18]

Waszewski, A., Morgan, J.S., Chhetri, R.et al., 2023, Space Weather, 21, e2023SW003570

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Pith tools

Reviewed August 11, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.

[1] [1]

Campbell, L., 1991, Stellar scintillation and its use in atmospheric measurements, PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide, http://hdl.handle.net/2440/19571

work page 1991

[2] [2]

Chhetri, R., Morgan, J.,et al., 2018, MNRAS, 474(4), 3937-4955

work page 2018

[3] [3]

bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597742

Clarke, M., 1964, Measuring radio source positions, PhD Thesis, Cambridge University,https://ethos. bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597742

work page 1964

[4] [4]

P., and Trudgett, M., 2014,Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 3-27

Fuller, R.S., Norris, R. P., and Trudgett, M., 2014,Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 3-27

work page 2014

[5] [5]

W., Barsa, J.,et al., 2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 131(1), 24-33

Hamacher, D. W., Barsa, J.,et al., 2019, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 131(1), 24-33

work page 2019

[6] [6]

and Weale, R., 1949, Nat., 164, 999-1000

Hartridge, H. and Weale, R., 1949, Nat., 164, 999-1000

work page 1949

[7] [7]

F., and Wills, D., 1964,Nat., 203, 1214-1217

Hewish, A., Scott, P. F., and Wills, D., 1964,Nat., 203, 1214-1217

work page 1964

[8] [8]

Hotan, A.W., Bunton, J.D., et al., 2021, PASA, 38, e009

work page 2021