A historical perspective of air, water and chemistry

Humans have always dealt with and been fascinated by the properties of our atmosphere. In ancient times, the motivation to observe the atmosphere was clearly the driving force which increased the understanding of nature. Atmospheric (weather) observations were closely associated with astronomy, and everything above the earth s surface was named heaven or ether . The weather phenomena - fog, mist and clouds, precipitation (rain, snow, and hail) and dew - have been described since Antiquity. A phenomenological understanding of the physical (but not the chemical) processes associated with hydrometeors was complete only by the end of the nineteenth century. Today the physics and chemistry in the aerosol-cloud-precipitation chain are relatively well understood - also with relation to climate. However, it seems that because of the huge complexity a mathematical description of the processes (i. e., the parameterization of the chemistry and also for climate modeling) is still under construction. 

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