Reg Clarke

Born in 1914, at Melrose (SA) he was the eldest son of a large farming family. His scholastic achievements and the support of his mother, a former schoolteacher, encouraged him to choose teaching rather than farming as a career. He obtained his BA and BSc at Adelaide University where his lecturers included the late Sir Douglas Mawson of Antarctic fame.

In 1940 he left the SA Education Department to join the RAAF Meteorological Service in which he served as a forecasting officer with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. In 1946 he joined the Bureau and was OIC of the Canberra Met Office until he was promoted in 1949 to a position of senior meteorologist in the Air Mass and Frontal Analysis Section, the forerunner of the National Meteorological Centre.

In his career with the RAAF and the Bureau he developed a keen interest in frontal and boundary layer phenomena. To facilitate research in this field he left the Bureau in 1957 to join the CSIRO Meteorological Physics Section as a research scientist. With that organisation his major contributions to Australian meteorology were based, in part, on major experiments at Hay (NSW) and Daly Waters (NT), conducted jointly by the CSIRO, the Bureau and Melbourne University.

His work led to a desire to improve the numerical meteorological models which he was using, and he spent several months in 1965–66 working with the redoubtable Dr Joe Smagorinsky in Washington.

This led in turn to his appointment as the first head of the Australian Numerical Meteorology Research Centre (ANMRC), formerly the Commonwealth Meteorology Research Centre. Under his leadership, ANMRC made major research advances leading to significant improvement in the performance of the Bureau's operational numerical forecasting systems.

After his retirement he continued work with the University of Melbourne, which honoured him with the degree of Doctor of Science in 1983. A major research study during this period was into the 'Morning Glory' phenomenon of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. He also provided the funds for the Clarke Endowment, which is used by the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society to assist promising young scientists to attend scientific meetings, to carry out observations, and to make computations.

Reg Clarke was a friendly, extremely likeable man. Although he had little time for foolish or idle persons he gave freely of his time to guide and encourage those who showed even a minimal interest in the pursuit of knowledge. It is this that many former Bureau colleagues, including the writer, include among their earliest treasured memories of Reg.

A large number of former and present Bureau colleagues, as well as many other colleagues and friends, farewelled Reg at a service at Springvale.

- contributed by Don Handcock

Bureau of Meteorology