Weather Satellites and the Ethos of Global Collaboration in the Cold War

In the summer of 1964, Soviet and American weather services set up a facsimile line between Moscow and Washington, DC.  This so-called “Cold Line” provided the political basis for a global meteorological data exchange program known as the World Weather Watch (WWW).  Under the auspices of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization, the WWW centralized and redistributed weather data derived from ground and satellite observations across the earth.  With negotiations spanning the darkest days of the Cold War, the WWW represented a key instance in which collaboration supplanted competition between the US and USSR.  It reflected the positive (valence) that spaceflight and fundamental science (in this case oceanography, meteorology, and atmospheric physics) had on the global stage, even in this period of geopolitical conflict.  How did weather data and scientific practice come to serve as a shared global activity, exemplifying a collaborative ethos rather than narrow national self-interests?

This paper explores how international policy— initiated by the US, but global in implication and scope—emerged from multiple scientific objectives, federal mandates, and interest groups oftentimes in direct conflict with one another.  In the tumultuous days following the launch of Sputnik, the US armed services, federal labs, US Weather Bureau, congress, and White House each shaped policy that led ultimately to the formation of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a primarily civilian endeavor that sought to balance Cold War initiatives and scientific values. 

From this institutional platform, NASA policymakers reframed national security projects (in this instance, the Tiros meteorological satellite program) as instruments for international scientific collaboration.  This offering of formerly military systems as international scientific assets proved a compelling catalyst in the halls of the UN, contributing to the initial development of international space law through the mid-1960s.