6 OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 



pressure system movements for ships' operational planning, more 

 broadcast time over commercial radio facilities is desirable. Govern- 

 ment and commercial stations which now broadcast shipping bulletins 

 cannot provide additional broadcast time for these transmissions. 

 Purchase of commercial broadcast time may be necessary. 



In recent years radio-facsimile broadcasts of weather charts have 

 been improved considerably. As a result the number of ships equipped 

 with facsimile receivers is increasing. These ships have need for 

 special weather and sea charts, especially the 5-day forecast and other 

 charts adapted to navigation purposes. They are unable to obtain 

 these charts from existing radio transmissions. It may be necessary 

 in the future to contract for broadcast time from commercial radio 

 companies to provide twice-daily facsimile transmissions of such in- 

 formation. At least two broadcast programs should be planned, one 

 broadcast station on the Atlantic coast, the other on the Pacific coast. 

 Also considered necessary is the installation of automatic telephone 

 answering facilities at offices located in 10 major port cities from which 

 the latest marine forecasts and warnings could be obtained. 



OCEAN CLIMATOLOGY 



Before turning to the research programs in meteorology and oce- 

 anography which probably are of direct interest to your committee, I 

 will comment briefly on the climatology branch of our ocean meteoro- 

 logical organization. Under the statutes and executive orders it is 

 the responsibility of the Weather Bureau to record and describe the 

 climates of the oceans. This function is performed primarily through 

 reduction of millions of ocean weather observations to punched card 

 form for machine tabulation. The results thus obtained by machine 

 methods are summarized and published by the Weather Bureau and 

 the Navy Hydrographic Office. The first volume of a new Climato- 

 logical and Oceanographic Atlas for marmers is just oft* the press and 

 I shall pass it around for your inspection. It treats the subject for 

 the North Atlantic Ocean. 



At present the marine observations that become part of our perma- 

 nent punched card working decks are not completely verified. While 

 domestic observations are checked both manually and by machine, 

 no similar check is made of marine observations. It is important that 

 these observations which are made by untrained observers be care- 

 fully verified or checked. A quality control program for merchant 

 marine weather observations should be inaugurated. Research work- 

 ers in the field of meteorological and oceanography need adequate 

 climatic summaries from "fixed" ocean station vessels and Great Lakes 

 ships. At present an abbreviated summary is published. It is pro- 

 posed however to prepare monthly local climatological data and an 

 annual local climatological data with comparative data for all ocean 

 station vessels and to provide summaries for several unit areas on each 

 of the Great Lakes. 



The Bureau now processes oceanographic observations contained 

 in its marine weather decks for various Government agencies on a 

 reimbursable basis. The data summarized are primarily sea sur- 

 face temperatures and wave observations. It is our intention to 

 continue this work if possible in tlie rapidly expanding oceano- 

 graphic network. 



