However, it was not only to the Air Force that the meteorologist provided information. Mobile meteorological flights served with Army formations in the island campaigns to provide advisory forecasts for artillery, for movement and for landing operations on beaches. Conditions favouring and hindering air support and favouring and hindering air observations and offensive operations by enemy aircraft were kept under meteorological observation and reported to operational headquarters.

It is impossible in a few pages to describe the scientific developments in meteorology during the war. A vast amount of planning and organisation was necessary to produce a service which at the same time could fulfil the functions of providing routine services for the whole of the South-West Pacific area and make important contributions to the development of techniques of analysis and forecasting which have been applicable in postwar practice (as applied to the South-West Pacific). Extensive communication facilities were required, weather codes and ciphers had to be arranged for the confidential exchange of data, and many other organisational details had to be attended to before the service could function as a practising organisation.

The history of the scientific developments of the meteorological service during the war may be best summed up by saying that the service entered the war with the field of three dimensional analysis and forecasting in Australia almost wholly unexplored, but by the time the war had ended was using techniques of analysis and forecasting in its daily routines equal in efficiency to those of any meteorological service in the world. These techniques, which were adapted to local conditions largely as the result of local investigations by officers of the Australian service, form the basis for further investigations into atmospheric processes which should lead to an extension of the accuracy and scope of forecasts.

Bureau of Meteorology