International Symposium on Antarctic Meteorology (continued)

Tom Gray's paper refers to the practical difficulties in operating a Weather Central at Little America. He states that "the major problem was collection of raw data early enough to be useful in scheduled analyses". This problem of maintaining a telecommunications system for the timely collection of data from high latitude stations in the southern hemisphere was to be a significant problem long after the conclusion of the IGY. I was to chair a WMO Antarctic Working Group in those years and telecommunications problems were the major difficulty in establishing an efficient method of data collection.

Although the Weather Central at Little America base had difficulty in maintaining its primary objective of assisting forecasters on the Antarctic continent, its staff were able to make significant contributions to the knowledge of atmospheric processes over and adjacent to the Antarctic continent. They were able to apply frontal models in their synoptic analyses as we in Australia had from the time of the establishment of ANARE bases at Heard and Macquarie Islands in 1948. Tom Gray's paper also contributed to the important question of the development of polar anticyclones in high southern latitudes.

Astapenko's paper emphasises the inadequacy of the enhanced surface observing network during the IGY and the difficulty experienced because of local effects which rendered surface observations unrepresentative of the broad circulation pattern of the atmosphere. Astapenko also reported that fronts were identifiable over the whole of the Antarctic continent, including the South Pole. One can appreciate the difficulties of Gray, Astapenko and their colleagues in using a network of observations which would be considered inadequate over the Australian continent, when the Antarctic continent is significantly larger.

Bureau of Meteorology