Welcoming Address on Behalf of the American 
Geophysical Union 
Het~mut WEICKMANN 
Chairman, Cloud Physics Committee 
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am very happy to welcome all of you on be- 
half of the American Geophysical Union to our meeting on cloud physics. 
As I look around in our big family here, I am especially happy to see 
Dr. Tor Bergeron, our Honorary Chairman. He has inspired modern me- 
teorology for over 40 years, and we appreciate his coming over from Swe- 
den on this long trip. We also have representatives of Australia, Canada, 
England, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, and others from Swe- 
den. I would like to ask all of you to get acquainted quickly. Let us be 
together as one big family of scientists, of researchers, and let us not for- 
get the ones who are unable to participate because of a very involved pro- 
cedure of invitation: our friends and fellow scientists from behind the so- 
called Iron Curtain. 
I am very happy to see some experts in fields related to the subject of 
the Conference, such as crystal physicist Dr. G. Wolff of the U.S. Army 
Signal Laboratories, and chemical physicist Dr. A. Goetz of the Physics 
Dept., California Institute of Technology, who is also representing the 
American Physical Society. I might also call Dr. J. Namias and Dr. J. 
Smagorinsky related experts. Both are well known to us. By inviting them 
we hope to extend a little bit our view of the precipitation processes of 
clouds, and to consider the problem of precipitation within the synoptic 
scale. 
T am especially happy that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
has played the host again. I wish to thank its Director, Dr. Paul Fye, for 
his fine hospitality and for his and his associates’ assistance in the organ- 
ization of this large meeting in a relatively small community. 
There certainly is an idea behind having the meeting here in Woods 
Hole. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is one of the few insti- 
tutions which is actively engaged in research of both micro- and macro- 
physical processes of cloud and precipitation mechanisms. Moreover, it is 
the water-air interface around which the studies center. This interface is 
not only very much larger than the ground-air interface, but it is also an 
extremely important one as the rain which we study ultimately stems 
from it. The important role which clouds on this interface in the trade- 
wind region have for the water vapor supply in the large-scale circulation 
is one of the outstanding results of this Institution’s studies of trade-wind 
cumulus clouds. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Instutition is therefore a 
most fitting meeting place for our Conference as it will provide a scientific 
atmosphere which shall greatly stimulate the discussions and aid in 
achieving the purpose of this Conference. This purpose is, I should say, to 
look for a true science adventure and not just for a science fiction story. 
Tn order to achieve this goal we have tried to arrange the program in a 
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