WEATHER REPORTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 291, 8 December 1937, Page 8

WEATHER REPORTS.

EXPANSION PROPOSED

CO-RELATING SERVICES.

ASSISTING AVIATION. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Immediate expansion of meteorological services for the assistance of aviation»in the south-west Pacific, by the establishment of additional reporting stations and receipt of mere frequent and upecialised reports from station*, aircraft and shipping observers, and progressively more effective co-relation of meteorological services of the whole of the Pacific, are proposed in resolutions and recommendations adopted at the South-west Pacific Regional Meteorological Conference, which sat in Wellington last week.

There is full confidence that the present serious handicaps to meteorological work ip thi* region can be largely removed and the services of the several countries made effective as regards overseas aviation, and also much more complete as regards general forecasts within the arras of the contributing countries, and for the particular national services for internal air lines, shipping and faruiing. Radio Communication. A basic resolution laid down the principle that meteorological services for trans-oceanic aviation cannot be undertaken without adequate facilities' for radio communication, that commercial cable services cannot meet the requirements of such services, and that provision must be made for point-to-point communication between the terminals. The proposals are for arrangement of broadcasts of the more detailed station reports in specified order, and that five issues of the national or Continental type shall be made at fixed hours daily from the Netherlands East Indies. Australia, New Zealand. Fiji and Samoa, and that, further, one international collective issue shall be made at fixed hours as from the south-west Pacific region as a whole, preferably from a station in Australia.

If the proposal of the conference can be put into effect the area surveyed will cover a great part of the southern hemisphere and 'ink up with the northern hemisphere services, making possible a co-related study of weather data from above and below the equator. Suggestions are advanced for the receipt oif reports fiom additional points, with emphasis on the Kermadecs. Ships' reports are also stressed.