Climate and Statistics

From the days of the colonial meteorological services much attention was devoted to preserving a record of observations made, not only in the Bureau's offices but also by part-time observers many of whom were postal staff or people living on outback pastoral or agricultural stations.

Some of these part-time observers made observations required for synoptic meteorology and were paid to transmit their observations by telegram to Divisional Offices. Many others made daily observations of rainfall without payment and these were mailed monthly to the Climate Section.

The Climate Section was the repository for all observations made by the Bureau's full-time, part-time and voluntary observers. In addition to the routine synoptic observations, elements such as grass minimum, soil and black-bulb temperatures, evaporation, sunshine hours, etc were stored in a data bank of manuscript records. Sunshine duration was measured by a strip of cardboard on which the sun's rays, focussed through a glass sphere, burnt the card when the radiation was sufficiently strong. These were stored by the Central Office Climate Section and had accumulated into a massive pile by the 1950s. Total hours of sunshine were recorded for each day in the Divisional Offices.

In addition to meteorological data, stock and crop reports and newspaper clippings were collected in the Climate Sections of Central and Divisional Offices.

A team of women in the Central Office Climate Section operated mechanical comptometers to calculate averages of monthly maximum and minimum temperatures and monthly rainfall totals. Records were also maintained of the extremes of maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall.

J. C. Foley was supervising meteorologist in charge of the Climate Section until his promotion as Chief Scientific Officer in February 1948, when B. W. Newman succeeded him, transferring from the Sydney Divisional Office.

Bureau of Meteorology