Memories of the Bureau, 1946 to 1962
Foreword
Terminology
Prologue
J. W. Zillman Director of Meteorology
The Seven Stages in the Life and Career of Dr W. J. Gibbs
The Meteorological Legacy of Dr Gibbs
Dr Gibb's Career—An Appreciation
Preface
Chapter 1: The Warren Years, 1946 to 1950
Chapter 2: International Meteorology
Chapter 3: The Timcke Years, 1950 to 1955
Chapter 4: A Year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chapter 5: The Dwyer Years, 1955 to 1962
Chapter 6: A Springboard for the Future
Appendix 1: References
Appendix 2: Reports, Papers, Manuscripts
Appendix 3: Milestones
Appendix 4: Acknowledgements
Appendix 5: Summary by H. N. Warren of the Operation of the Meteorological Section of Allied Air Headquarters, Brisbane, 1942–45
Endnotes
Index
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Bill was also, in many ways, the father of flood forecasting and warning in the Bureau. Although the national flood warning responsibility had resided with the Bureau for many decades, it was the devastating NSW floods of the mid 1950s which led to a 1957 Government decision to substantially upgrade the Bureau's flood warning capabilities. Bill moved quickly to build up the Bureau's hydrometeorological expertise and to bring hydrological engineers into the Bureau to develop integrated flood warning systems for key catchments in the eastern States. His personal effort in building up working relations with the embryonic State Emergency Services played a vital part in ensuring the effectiveness of Australia's flood warning systems in the seventies and early eighties.
Operational Oceanography
Long convinced of the importance of linking the study and forecasting of the atmosphere and ocean, Bill worked closely with the CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Australian Navy in early initiatives to establish moored buoy networks for sea temperature measurement in the Australian region. He also became one of the international driving forces behind the concept and subsequent implementation of drifting buoy networks in the Southern Ocean to compensate for the lack of research and merchant ships as data sources for weather and climate forecasting. In the early 1970s, he led the Australian effort to establish a systematic national approach to operational oceanography, an initiative which, unfortunately, fell on unresponsive ears in Canberra.
Economic Value of Meteorological Services
Under Bill's leadership, and with the active support of then Departmental Secretary, Mr Dick (later Sir Richard) Kingsland, Australia was among the first countries in the world to proceed with systematic studies of the economic and social value of meteorological services. The Bureau's 1964 Conference and publication on 'What is Weather Worth?' set the essential framework for economic valuation studies which was to be taken up in other countries over succeeding decades. It remains, even today, one of the most significant framework initiatives for the design, provision and evaluation of meteorological services worldwide.
People in Bright Sparcs - Gibbs, William James (Bill); Kingsland, Richard
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© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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