WEATHER FORECASTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 9, 8 December 1937, Page 10

WEATHER FORECASTS.

IN PACIFIC AREA. FAR-REACHING PLANS. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Dec. 8. An immediate expansion of the meteorological services for the assistance of aviation in the south-west Pacific by the establishment of additional reporting stations and the receipt of more frequent a.nd specialised reports from stations, aircraft and shipping observers, and a progressively more effective correlation of the meteorological services of whole of the Pacific are proposed in the 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 in this region will 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 areas of the contributing countries and for the particular national services for internal air lines, shipping and farming: A basic resolution laid down the < principle that the meteorological services for trans-oceanic aviation cannot be undertaken without adequate facilities for radio communication ; that the 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 an arrange - ment of broadcasts of the more detailed station reports in a specified order, and that five issues of a national or continental type shall be made at fixed hours daily from the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, New- Zealand, Fiji and Samoa, and that a further one—an 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 a.nd link up with the Northern Hemisphere services, making possible a correlated study of weather data from above and below the Equator. Suggestions are advanced for the receipt of reports from additional points, with emphasis on the Kermadecs; ships’ reports are also stressed.