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Fifty years of weather obs

Solar pillar at Davis
Photo: I. Phillips

World Meteorological Day (23 March) was celebrated at Davis last week with a joint function in Hobart. As this is International Polar Year, the day was dedicated to polar meteorology.

Davis has been a site for regular weather observations for fifty years, with only a short break during the building of Casey station between January 1965 and February 1969.

A celebratory breakfast for the whole station was held in the Davis Met office at 8 am to coincide with the lunch time function at the Hobart office of the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). A video streaming facility and telephone hook-up allowed the participation of Davis with the Hobart function, at which the first Davis Station and Met Officer in Charge (OIC), Bob Dingle, was celebrity guest.

Denise Allen, the current Met OIC on station and the first BoM woman to winter on the continent, talked with her counterpart from fifty years earlier. She then 'unveiled' a plaque sent down from the Hobart office to celebrate the commissioning of new satellite receiving facilities, the Advanced Very High Resolution Radar (AVHRR), part of BoM's IPY programme.

Denise unveils the plaque
Photo: L. Defrenza

New plaque for Davis Met office
Photo: D. Allen

New satellite dome at Davis
Photo: G. Cook

Denise explains the benefits of the AVHRR:

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radar was put in place over summer by BoM technicians with the assistance of the Davis summer construction crew. The antennae dome was installed on 10 January 2007 and the first image received on the 18 January.

The equipment allows images to be received from the NOAA polar orbiting satellites. Previously, we have only had passes received from the Casey receiving station. However with the equipment at Davis, we can now capture passes further westward, thus giving us a better coverage of Antarctica.

Group of expeditioners outside white salellite dome at Davis

Group of Davis expeditioners with AVHRR Photo: J. Stoukalo

Expeditioners inspect inside the dome
Photo: J. Stoukalo

The equipment will benefit air operations Photo: J. Rich

The new AVHRR, in conjunction with the automatic weather station at the Davis skiway, will also benefit summer aircraft operations for the Australian Antarctic programme as they facilitate more accurate real-time weather observations.

Antarctic weather observations at Davis, as well as those from the other three Australian stations at Casey, Mawson and Macquarie Island, have long played a significant role in the international meteorological community.

This tradition of international cooperation, which has now been in existence for over 100 years, provided the trigger for the establishment of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as an inter-governmental organisation in 1950. The WMO gathers and distributes weather information without regard to political or economic boundaries. It now has 185 member countries, of which Australia is one.