Australia Yearbook - 2001

30 Year Book Australia 2001
The arrangements for provision of weather
services for civil aviation were to undergo many
changes through the rest of the century,
particularly following the establishment of the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
in 1946. The extension of forecasting offices to
more and more airports came to an end in the
early 1970s with the consolidation of most of the
Bureau’s forecasting staff in capital city Regional
Forecasting Centres, with only briefing and very
short term forecasting functions remaining at a
few airports. This was later further centralised,
mainly for cost reduction reasons, in the early
1990s.
Meteorology at the universities
Despite some useful work in a few geography
departments, the Australian universities showed
little interest in meteorology through the 1920s
and 30s. In a report to the Prime Minister in 1937,
the UK aviation expert H. E. Wimperis
recommended, inter alia, the initiation of
university research aimed at more accurate
weather forecasting and improved understanding
of the structure of the atmosphere. This led to
Bureau funding for a small meteorological
department at Melbourne University. The first
Reader-in-Charge was the distinguished German
polar scientist Dr Fritz Loewe, who provided
inspiration to a generation of Bureau
meteorologists from the late 1930s onwards. The
Wimperis report was followed by a further report
on meteorological research and training in
the universities and the Bureau, by the then
Director General of the UK Meteorological
Office, Sir George Simpson.
Under Loewe, and subsequently Dr Uwe
Radok, the Meteorology Department at
Melbourne University played a leading role in
the development of Australian Antarctic
meteorology and glaciology, but struggled
for recognition and critical mass. It did not
achieve professorial status until 1980. With
the departure of Dr Peter Schwerdtfeger to
Adelaide and Professor Bill Budd to Hobart,
Melbourne retained only a small, albeit
highly productive, meteorological effort in
the School of Earth Services, with Monash
University emerging as the strongest
Australian university in meteorological
research and teaching during the 1970s and
80s. Initially, under the leadership of
Professor Bruce Morton, it developed as a
centre of excellence in geophysical fluid
dynamics and a source of many of those who
were to later assume important roles on the
Australian meteorological scene. Significant
university groups in meteorology also
developed at Macquarie University (under
Dr Edward Linacre and subsequently
Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers), Murdoch
University and the James Cook University of
North Queensland.
C2.4 Former members of the RAAF Meteorological Service gather in Melbourne in August 1995,
fifty years after the end of the war.