Meteorological Office Routine (continued)

Figure 4 Gibbs and Hannay about to make pilot balloon observation of upper winds, Port Moresby, 1941. At that time the professional meteorologists were jacks of all trades, making observations, plotting and analysing charts and making forecasts.

I did not have many customers in this, my first experience as a practising meteorologist. They included Joss Crisp and his copilot in the weekly Carpenters Airlines DH-86 service which flew from Sydney to Port Moresby, Salamaua and Rabaul and return to Sydney with overnight stops at Townsville and Salamaua. Other customers were Norman Fader, flying his Fokker tri-motor between Port Moresby and the gold-mining centres of Kokoda, Wau and Bulolo; the pilots of the two RAAF Short Empire 'C' Class flying boats which were the only aircraft operated at that time by No 11 Squadron at its operational base in the town of Port Moresby; and the pilots of other itinerant aircraft such as those associated with oil exploration in the Gulf of Papua. By today's standards the meteorological services provided were distinctly unsophisticated. We had no radiosondes providing observations of temperature and humidity of the upper air, no radar for wind-finding or weather watching, no automatic weather stations in the Coral Sea, and no meteorological satellites to provide a continuous identification and tracking of clouds and other useful information over the data sparse oceans. This lack of sophistication was mirrored by that of our aeradio and aerial navigation systems and the primitive technology in the aircraft.

In retrospect I am amazed at our effrontery in attempting to make forecasts with such little data and such a poor knowledge of mechanisms of the tropical atmosphere. We were able to trace narrow isolated cloud bands which were generally aligned along the direction of the wind and mostly moved slowly towards the equator, but they had a tendency to wax and wane. When upper winds were available at flying level from departure and arrival aerodromes we made a linear interpolation between the two points. But overall our synoptic chart did not contain a great deal of information.

Bureau of Meteorology