Bob Brook, Asst Director (Observations)

The appointment follows Bob's return in March this year from a two-year stint as Project Manager of the Australian contingent in Saudi Arabia.

The new Branch, which includes a staff of approximately 100 and has responsibility for the Bureau's Observing and Engineering Services Programs, will offer a "multitude of challenges", according to Bob.

Managing the Bureau's resources and maintaining instruments to prescribed standards are tasks which have been facilitated as a result of the excellent reorganisation of the Branch engineered by former ADF Keith Henderson and Peter Shaw, who acted in the ADO position for some time. In Bob's words, Keith and Peter "did a fantastic job making order from chaos". The reorganisation was particularly complicated because a large section of the former Facilities Branch was transferred to Communications and Computing and the existing two sections were increased to a total of five.

Bob sees some of his major tasks as the introduction of new technology, such as the installation of new radars, integration of the advanced radiosonde system, and the adaptation of major developments in satellite imagery and regional graphics to suit Bureau requirements.

In response to pressure to increase the precision of solar radiation network measurements for use in numerical weather prediction and climate studies, an instrument upgrade program is seen as very important.

As an example of the new technologies, there are also plans, in conjunction with RMIT, to install a scanning interferometer on the roof of 150 Lonsdale Street to undertake a study of state-of-the-art methods of obtaining vertical temperature profiles.

The Observations and Engineering Branch also covers ozone monitoring, for which the Bureau has had national responsibility since 1980.

Bureau of Meteorology