Publications

Most were routine publications of climatic summaries but some Bureau publications contained meteorological discussions of scientific significance. One was the hard-cover Climate and Weather of Australia by Hunt, Taylor and Quayle (1913).

Bureau soft-cover Bulletins were published from time to time. These included those by Quayle (No 5 1910, No 10 1915), Taylor (No 8 1914, Nos 13 and 14 1916), Kidson (No 16 1923), Kidson and Camm (No 17 1925), Treloar and Newman (No 24 1938), Loewe (No 21 1940) and Gibbs (No 30 1943). There were also contributions to external publications such as the reports of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, later the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS)) for example that of Kidson in 1923.

I believe the first Bureau publication inviting contributions from Divisional and field offices was the series of TWRB produced in the meteorological section of Allied Air Headquarters, Brisbane in May 1944. The circumstances leading to the publication of this series and the content thereof are described by Gibbs (1995). The 15th and last of that series was published in April 1946, shortly before the RAAF Meteorological Service was disbanded. In April 1945 Harry Treloar began the production of the WDRB which continued until August 1951. Seventeen were issued.

Articles in the TWRB and WDRB were almost exclusively directed towards a better understanding of atmospheric processes in order to produce a more scientific basis for weather forecasting. From the viewpoint of a modern meteorologist this may appear to be short-sighted. He/she might well suggest that more effort should have been devoted to more basic scientific research.

Bureau of Meteorology