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Table of Contents

Memories of the Bureau, 1946 to 1962

Foreword

Terminology

Prologue

Preface

Chapter 1: The Warren Years, 1946 to 1950
Warren the Man
Warren Joins the Bureau
Wartime Perceptions and Attitudes
Return to Civvy Street
Frosterley
People in the Bureau
Re-establishing and Reorganising the Bureau
Reorganisation of Central Office
The Position of Chief Scientific Officer
Post-War Reorganisation
The Haldane Story
Public Weather Services
The New South Wales Divisional Office
The Victorian Divisional Office
The Queensland Divisional Office
The South Australian Divisional Office
The Western Australian Divisional Office
The Tasmanian Divisional Office
Pre-war Services for Civil Aviation
Post-War Meteorological Service for Aviation
Indian Ocean Survey Flight
The Aviation Field Staff
Synoptic Analysis, Prognosis and Forecasting
Antarctic and Southern Ocean Meteorology
A Wider Scientific Horizon
Research, Development and Special Investigations
Analysts' Conference, April 1950
Instruments and Observations
Radiosondes
Radar Winds and Radar Weather Watch
Telecommunications
Climate and Statistics
Training
Publications
CSIRO
The Universities
Achievements of the Warren Years

Chapter 2: International Meteorology

Chapter 3: The Timcke Years, 1950 to 1955

Chapter 4: A Year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chapter 5: The Dwyer Years, 1955 to 1962

Chapter 6: A Springboard for the Future

Appendix 1: References

Appendix 2: Reports, Papers, Manuscripts

Appendix 3: Milestones

Appendix 4: Acknowledgements

Appendix 5: Summary by H. N. Warren of the Operation of the Meteorological Section of Allied Air Headquarters, Brisbane, 1942–45

Endnotes

Index
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A Wider Scientific Horizon

The stimulation of working with colleagues such as Neil McRae, John Lillywhite, Reg Clarke, Henry Phillpot and others in the CAWDS and the Research Section, contact with the staff of the newly-formed CSIR Section of Meteorological Physics, with Fritz Loewe and Uwe Radok of the Meteorological Section of the University of Melbourne and with overseas meteorologists (all discussed later) gave me a much broader horizon of the scientific aspects of meteorology and the practice of synoptic analysis and prognosis and weather forecasting.

A significant stimulation also came from the flood of scientific papers and textbooks which became available towards the end of the war and in the early post-war years. An outstanding example of these scientific papers was that of R. C. Sutcliffe (1947) which opened new vistas of atmospheric mechanisms, particularly the importance of vertical profiles of divergence in the development of weather systems. Although we had encountered the notion of divergence in our training course in 1940, and in the textbooks of Petterssen and Brunt, Sutcliffe's paper was of such elegance, comprehensibility and obvious relevance to the work of the practising forecaster that it had widespread appeal.

Another source of stimulus was the growing availability of radiosonde observations of temperature and humidity in the upper air which had not been available at the time of our 1940 forecasting course.

The daily routine of preparing synoptic analyses and prognoses for the Australia/New Zealand region and the Southern Ocean required consideration of the basic atmospheric systems over these regions.


People in Bright Sparcs - Clarke, Reginald Henry; Lillywhite, John Wilson; Loewe, Fritz; McRae, John Neil; Phillpot, Henry Robert; Warren, Herbert Norman

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Gibbs, W. J. 1999 'A Very Special Family: Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology 1946 to 1962', Metarch Papers, No. 13 May 1999, Bureau of Meteorology

© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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