They also agreed on various matters relating to the handling of observational data; for example, how daily mean temperatures were to be calculated, the scale and projection to be used in daily weather maps, and details to be included in published meteorological statistics. Above all, they formally resolved to adopt the method isobaric analysis that had for some years been standard in Europe and North America. Hector, who introduced the resolution, reported that his office had been preparing daily isobaric maps and issuing forecasts based upon them.[71] He pointed out that doing this 'depended upon the assumption that the deductions which had led to the adoption of the isobaric system in the Northern hemisphere were applicable to these colonies', but immediately added that 'he considered that the work done in New Zealand since 1877 had completely established that proposition'.[72] Though Russell concurred on the value of analysis by means of isobars, he had not yet adopted them 'because he had felt that the observatories were not sufficiently numerous to enable us to trace the lines'. Now, he said, with a steadily increasing number of stations reporting, and with New Zealand and Tasmania about to join the scheme, he would be happy to do so. Todd indicated that he had been drawing isobars for some time but had not published the results, feeling, like Russell, that 'they rested upon insufficient data, owing to the fewness of barometric stations'. Ellery, finally, said that, seventeen years before (that is, during Neumayer's period in Melbourne),

work was done at the Melbourne Observatory in drawing curves from logs of ships and tracing out the isobars. This was continued for nearly two years [and] was only given up because there was not a sufficient number of observing stations in Australia to carry on the system. He thought it could now be carried out, and therefore supported the motion.

Bureau of Meteorology