OCEANOGRAPHY EST THE UNITED STATES 15' 



happens very frequently and that, if we had more data, knew more 

 about these things, the forecasts would not only be more definite; 

 more accurate, but they would be very much more valuable. 



Mr. Miller. Doctor, if we get these data, are we going to destroy 

 one of the great American pastimes of blaming everything on the 

 Weather Bureau? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. Mr. Chairman, I can assure you that there' 

 will always be a margin of error and they will always have their 

 pastime. 



Mr. Miller. This last is very interesting with respect to that 

 factor. It was after it was all over when you did get this picture" 

 that you could fairly well determine why the heavy rains occurred 

 and why you missed them below. This is a great argument. 



Mr. Reichelderfer. We were completely lost for an explanation 

 until the photograph came in. 



Mr. Miller. This might have been quite revealing. I assume; 

 to all of the staff who saw it. 



Are there any questions? 



Mr. Oliver. I just wanted to make one observation and then ask 

 a question. 



W^e have heard a lot, Doctor, about the missile gap and now you 

 are mentioning the gap here in your particular activities. 



Could this be called the dollar gap or the funding gap, maybe? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. Partly tliat. However, things have devel- 

 oped rather rapidly in recent years and, of course, many of the things 

 we are doing now we could not do until rockets were developed, until 

 electronic computers were developed to handle the data. We have 

 at Suitland now a National Meteorological Center to which all of these 

 reports are fed in. 



Mr. Miller. Where is that? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. Just near Andrew^s Field. It is between 

 here and Andrews Field. This computer is absolutely indispensable 

 to handle the great mass of data. 



By way of illustration, the computation of a forecast for th^ 

 Northern Hemisphere — a prognostic chart, not the worded forecast 

 but a chart showing wliat it is going to be 36 hours from now — jvist 

 one chart 36 hours from now involves 80 million mathematical steps. 

 That is counting each addition, subtraction, or multiplication as a 

 step. This is accomplished in a matter of an liour or two, less than 

 that, for the actual computation. 



When it was tried in a much more simplified form years and years^ 

 ago by hand, it took a stafl" of some dozen computers 6 weeks to 

 coinpute the forecast 6 hours ahead. 



This shows the work involved in the computations of this kind, 

 so that the computer was necessary and therefore advancement in 

 meteorology and in these oceanographic aspects of meteorology 

 depended to a considerable extent, not onh- on funds, but on develop- 

 ment in supporting technical fields. 



Mr. Oliver. Are your observations and operations and com- 

 putations and what not being seriously impaired by reason of not 

 having sufficient funds to expand your operations? 



Mr. Reichelderfer. I think I may say yes. We just received 

 the report on our hearings this week and we w^ere reduced considerably. 



