Dynamic Meteorology I, II, III

Lectures on Dynamic Meteorology I and III were delivered by Victor Starr, those on Dynamic Meteorology II by Ed Lorenz.

Victor Starr was the archetypical university professor. Of medium height, slight in build, immaculately dressed and soft but precise in voice. He often carried an umbrella when making his entry to deliver a lecture and reminded me of the presence of an actor stepping onto the stage. His presence seemed to impress his class that he was someone of importance who should be listened to.

Starr's lectures on Dynamic Meteorology I occupy 34 pages of my notebook which I rewrote in the evening from the rough jottings made during the lectures during that day. They reveal that Starr's lectures commenced with the announcement that dynamic meteorology consists of the applications of Newtonian principles to the motion of the atmosphere. They included discussion of the Coriolis force, geostrophic, gradient, thermal and isallobaric winds, fronts, forces of the pressure gradient and friction, conservation of mass, vorticity and the circulation theorem. Many of these topics had already been included in Austin's lectures but I welcomed the opportunity to refresh the memories of the somewhat sketchy lectures on dynamic meteorology during the Bureau's training course I had attended in 1940.

Since that time my work as a meteorological professional in forecasting for the RAAF and in preparing synoptic analyses and prognoses for mean sea level and higher levels in the atmosphere had not required a routine use of these equations in dynamic meteorology. We in the RAAF Meteorological Service and the post-war Bureau had only considered such equations when trying to decide on methods of synoptic analysis and prognosis, when preparing papers to record the findings of our spare-time research or when studying the papers of English and American meteorologists in meteorological journals.

Bureau of Meteorology