RAAF Meteorological Service
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Weather Factor in Warfare
Chapter 2: Establishing and Developing the RAAF Directorate of Met. Services (D.Met.S)
Chapter 3: Recruiting and Training of Personnel
Chapter 4: Meteorology in Aviation
Chapter 5: The Met. Retreating
Chapter 6: The Met. Advancing
Chapter 7: The Met With the Army and the Navy
Chapter 8: Divisional Offices of the Bureau of Meteorology During the War
Chapter 9: Research and Instrumental Development
Research
Instrumental Development
Chapter 10: The End, Aftermath, and Beyond
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
References
Index
Search
Help
Contact us
Research (continued)
Squires found that the best method was to study the variations of weather elements, such as temperature and wind direction, with time at a specified place. If such elements were found to behave abnormally over time, it could reasonably be expected that a new air mass had arrived at the place. Naturally, local effects had to be taken into account. For instance, if the station was on the coast, a sea breeze may have arrived, changing the wind direction and bringing in cooler air that was not related to a frontal system. In a mountainous region, a katabatic wind might have descended to affect the local weather conditions. But it was the forecaster's knowledge, experience and skill which enabled him to recognise such distractions for the temporary things they were, and to identify fronts as phenomena which move and behave in a characteristically regular manner. Thus, he could assemble the evidence from regular reports and successive plotting of charts to locate and follow the fronts with good accuracy.From January 1941, the Melbourne office was able to send to all forecasting offices in Australia a coded message delineating the position of fronts and other weather systems. This was of assistance to the local forecaster, who, however, was still responsible for interpreting the information and for forecasting in his own domain.
The work of a meteorological office required a team of forecasters, Meteorological Assistants and Meteorological Charters working 24 hours a day in continuous shifts. Regular weather and pilot balloon and radiosonde observations had to be carried out, and the results had to be plotted and recorded. The forecaster then located the fronts and systems, drew the isobars, studied the situation generally, and issued whatever forecasts were required. This work demanded the recruitment and training of staff for the RAAF in the new techniques as quickly as possible. Courses of instruction (described in Chapter Three) in all fields of meteorology, including airmass and frontal analysis, were drawn up by Treloar with the help of his colleagues in the research section (John Hogan and Allan Cornish) and of Dr Loewe.
In the process of the transferring of the Commonwealth Meteorological Service to the RAAF, Group-Captain Warren did not waste time. Research into weather analysis, forecasting and climatology was intensified and accelerated—especially in regard to the tropical conditions north of Australia.
People in Bright Sparcs - Cornish, Allan William; Hogan, John; Loewe, Fritz; Squires, Patrick; Treloar, Harry Mayne; Warren, Herbert Norman
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© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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