Abstract
THE eighty-second year of the Meteorological Office is referred to in the annual report of the Director for the year ended March 31, 1937, as one of planning and preparation with the object of providing the greatly extended meteorological services required by the expanding Royal Air Force and by the increase of flying on civil air routes. These projected increases of meteorological activity have made it necessary for new staff to be recruited and trained in the special work required of them; in particular, the need for trained forecasters has had to be met in order to staff the principal forecasting centres on the various flying routes. The new Empire Air Mail Scheme led to the formation of a new division of the Meteorological Office in 1935 to organize the meteorological services of the trans-Atlantic and Empire air routes, the duty of advising the Governments of territories traversed by the routes having devolved on the Meteorological Office, and throughout the year under review that division was preparing for the new mail service. The forecast and aviation division has given particular attention to the information required by civil and R.A.F. aircraft in connexion with flying in and through clouds—information about the winds to be expected and warnings of dangerous conditions likely to lead to ice accretion between certain heights in strata where temperature lies between 0° F. and 35° F. and other circumstances are favourable for such accretion. It has now been determined that really dangerous conditions are scarcely ever found when temperature is more than a few degrees above or below the freezing point.
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Progress in the Meteorological Office. Nature 141, 30 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141030b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141030b0