History of Research in the Bureau of Meteorology
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Germination and Growth
The First Three Decades
A Time of Rapid Growth
Chapter 2: Struggle, Competition and Emergence
Appendix 1: Meteorology Act 1906
Appendix 2: Meteorology Act 1955
Appendix 3: Simpson Report
Appendix 4: Survey Questionnaire
Appendix 5: Bibliography
References
Index
Search
Help
Contact us
Watt also took the opportunity to downplay the results of two RRB workers, Boswell and Wark, who had examined the correlation between atmospherics and the location of cold fronts over southern Australia and the Tasman Sea. They had suggested that CRDF should be used to track the movement of cold fronts across the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman and wrote two papers on the topic. Watt, however, dismissed the idea and this time he received support from H. Barkley (Kidson's successor as ADR) and Kidson himself, by then Director of the New Zealand Weather Service.
Research on the subject continued at the RRB, alongside ongoing negotiations with the Bureau, until they agreed on a six-month joint study in 1935. As a result H. M. Treloar, a Bureau research worker, was seconded to work at the Board. However, despite some initially useful results, Treloar eventually decided that CRDF was of no practical value to the Bureau, leading to its withdrawal from the project in mid-1936.
However the Bureau did use Army High Frequency DF equipment to make sferics observations during the war and finally purchased its own CRDF instruments sometime in the early 1950s (Handcock in a personal communication). Two networks were established, one to cover the north and east, with the other directed towards the south and west of the continent and they made regular observations for some twenty years, before being scrapped following the introduction of satellite photographs during the 1960s.
People in Bright Sparcs - Kidson, Edward; Treloar, Harry Mayne; Watt, William Shand
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© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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