OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 13 



storms, but we do not know the whole story yet. We have made 

 some progress in learning about the controls. For example, you have 

 all heard about the so-called jet stream in the upper air. This illus- 

 trates one position of the jet stream. If it is far north instead of 

 coming down here over the United States, then a hurricane coming 

 along this path normally will usually go right across the Gulf and 

 come up into the interior. However, if this jet stream dips down here, 

 as it often docs and as it did in the case of one of the severe hurri- 

 canes — Carol, I think — the strong winds of the jet stream pick the 

 hurricane up when it gets along the Carolina coast, and in the case of 

 the storm I mentioned, it accelerates it from 8 miles per hour or 10 

 miles per hour in forward speed to 40 or 50 miles per hour. This is 

 what brought the development so ciuickly to the New England coast 

 in the particular case that I mentioned. 



What are we doing to get more information and to fill the gaps in 

 the network? There are several approaches. We have in recent 

 years developed a system of cooperation with some of the merchant 

 ships to take upper air soundings. We have a crew of three or four 

 that we put on these ships and they release the balloons and take 

 soundings en route, and these tracks across the Pacific and the At- 

 lantic show how some of the gaps are filled. Of course, the ships 

 stick pretty closely to the reguhir sealanes so that still leaves great 

 gaps outside of tlie regular lanes. 



Another approach to getting observation in the wide-open spaces is 

 the use of automatic weather stations. 



In the case of the sea, the station is attached to a buoy to keep it 

 afloat. The Weather Bureau has used automatic weather stations 

 for quite a number of years on land and on isolated islands. It is 

 quite a different matter to build one that will stand the rigors of tossing 

 about on the oceans in the open sea, but the Navy has gone ahead with 

 this development. It is a costly development, so that they were able 

 to finance it better than we. We have contributed some and we have 

 cooperated with them in monitoring the reports and we expect that 

 in the next year or two, these will go into production in modest quan- 

 tities and that these can be put in some of these wideopen spaces. 



The dots show where automatic weather stations might be placed. 

 Here is North America, Europe, and Asia, the Atlantic and Pacific 

 Oceans. They are not placed up here because these are the normal 

 shipping lanes where we can use the other methods. 



Mr. Miller. Will those send back their findings? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. By radio, yes. 



Mr. Miller. You do not have to visit them? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. No. They report every 6 hours. The time 

 can be changed but it is usually four times a day, every 6 hours, to tie 

 in with the international hour of weather observations all over the 

 globe. 



The most glamorous new method is the use of satellites and we 

 meteorologists are not just trying to get a free ride. The satellite 

 really offers some of the most revolutionary means that can be con- 

 ceived of getting information over the globe as a whole because this 

 really is a bird's-eye view of what the atmosphere looks like from 

 above. 



We know from photographs from rockets and from balloons and 

 high altitude aircraft that a camera or a television outfit would give 



53203— 60— pt. 2 3 



