Rain Seminar (continued)

Pat Squires raised some fundamental questions needing solution before adequately accurate predictions or computations of rainfall could be made. He emphasised that much more research was needed into cloud dynamics before reliable advice could be provided. Eric Kraus stressed the gap between the cloud physicists and the hydrometeorologists in the convective models they used.

Uwe Radok stressed the opportunities which were likely to become available in using the computer to forecast dynamics of the atmosphere from which rainfall predictions could be made. He related a recent experiment in which his group had made the computer run backwards. This suggested that a depression evident on a chart may previously have developed in a region from which no observations were available.

Neil McRae emphasised the value of the seminar for synoptic meteorologists engaged in rainfall forecasting. He pointed out that the forecaster has a wide range of atmospheric and topographic features to consider in making his rainfall forecasts. He felt that synoptic meteorologists would benefit from what they had learnt at the seminar.

In closing proceedings Len Dwyer paid particular thanks to the cloud physicists, the staff of the Universities of Melbourne and New South Wales, the Hunter Valley Research Foundation and the SMHEA for their interest in the problems encountered by Bureau staff in observing, storing and analysing rainfall data, providing advice on rainfall probability, making forecasts of rainfall and warning of floods. He felt that considerable progress had been made in solving these problems in recent years but acknowledged that much more remained to be done.

Bureau of Meteorology