AUTOMATIC WEATHER STATION

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28222, 9 March 1957, Page 6

AUTOMATIC WEATHER STATION

Australian Installation In Antarctica

(From Our Own Correspondent)

SYDNEY. March 1. One Australian contribution to the success of the International Geophysical Year which begins in June, will be to install and operate an automatic weather reporting station on the Windmill Islands on the Knox Coast of the Australian Antarctic Territory. It will be the first station in the world to operate unattended for periods of nine to 12 months. The station, which is activated by an electro-mechanical “brain” has been designed to withstand winds of up to 120 miles an hour, snow and very low temperatures. It is now undergoing experimental tests near Port Phillip, Victoria.

The Minister of the Interior, Mr A. Fairhall, said that the station’s electro-mechanical “brain” turned on power and prepared the radio transimtter, meteorological instruments, and a coding device 10 minutes before each broadcast. At the appropiate time, it switched on full power and activated controls and commenced to transmit. Electric power for the station would be stored in batteries which could be charged by a

wind-driven generator. Excess power could be used to operate small heaters to prevent batteries from freezing under Antarctic conditions. Mr Fairhall said the purchase of the station folowed a worldwide search for a suitable station to operate during the International Geophysical Year. The search had •included Britain, Norway, Sweden. Switzerland, Germany, Canada and America. Finally a French company, which had built an automatic station to withstand Sahara Desert conditions, undertook to build the Australian station. The station will broadcast barometric pressures, temperatures and wind speeds. The broadcasts will be picked up by the Civil Aviation Communications Centre at Essen - don, Melbourne, and passed to the Bureau of Meteorology. Mr Fairhall said that during the experiments in Victoria, the performance of the station would be watched to see whether it would be practicable to install this type of station in remote parts of Australia where no weather reports were at present available. This

type of station might also be suitable for installation near major cities to enable a more accurate timing of significant weather changes. The installation of an automatic station in the Antarctic would be of immense value in forecasting in Austraia, added Mr Fairhall.