APPLIED CLIMATOLOGY 
c. Is it of importance to stay below critical limits or 
are there known or desirable optimum conditions? 
9. Are operational figures (production, yield, etc.) avail- 
able for correlation purposes? For how many years 
(cases)? 
QUESTIONNAIRE II: ANALYSIS ofr Ciimatic Data 
(Climatic Diagnosis) 
1. Class of climatological technique required (see Table 
Ill)? 
2. What types of data are desirable? 
a. Elements (pressure, temperature, winds, etc.)? 
b. Are combinations of elements required? If so, 
what combinations? Are their relationships 
known? 
c. What length of record is needed for an adequate 
solution? 
3. What climatic data are available? 
a. At the spot; in the area; over the region? 
b. In what form are the data? Are existing sum- 
marizations suitable? 
c. What length of record is available? 
d. Are climatic data available for the same periods 
covered by the operational information? (See 
Questionnaire I, Item 9). 
4. What are the local peculiarities in climate that may 
affect the usefulness of existing climatic data? 
5. What are the physical or statistical limitations im- 
posed on the data and their interpretation? 
6. Does theoretical information (or a suitable tech- 
nique) exist that can serve to supplement, evaluate, 
or be substituted for, the inadequate observational 
materials? 
7. Are solutions available for analogous climatological 
problems? 
8. Is there a need to elaborate a new theory of inter- 
relations? 
9. What form of presentation of the conclusions is 
desirable? 
a. Graphs. 
b. Tables. 
c. Formulas. 
d. Alignment diagrams. 
It, is very essential that both parties involved in the 
climatological analysis of an operation, the climatolo- 
gist and the operator, collaborate. They should under- 
stand each other’s problems. As far as possible, this 
understanding should be reached before the job is 
begun. Frequent consultations during the progress of 
the actual work are indispensable. 
Data for Applied Climatology 
The amount of climatic material in the files of the 
various weather services is staggering. The number of 
surface observations is running into at least nine digits. 
Much of this material has undergone some elementary 
summarization. We estimate that mean monthly tem- 
perature and precipitation data are available for not 
less than 25,000 localities in the world. Some one 
977 
hundred million synoptic observations (including data 
on pressure, temperature, cloudiness, current weather, 
etc., as expressed in the international code) are now 
available on punched cards. Upper-air data are also 
accumulating on punched cards at a rapid rate, al- 
though techniques allowing their use in the three- 
dimensional sense remain to be developed. The major 
depository of these punched cards is the joint U. S. 
Weather Bureau—Air Force—Navy punched-card li- 
brary at New Orleans, Louisiana. This material has a 
great deal of flexibility. Summarizations and frequency 
distributions can readily be obtained from the raw 
material at high speeds [2, 37, 68]. There are, however, 
important limitations inherent in the sorting and tabu- 
lating machines [31]. The climatologist has to realize 
this. The essence of these limitations is that one cannot 
get more out of a machine than is put into it. Also, the 
machine will do no thinking. 
Spot observations of meteorological data are useful 
for a variety of problems in applied climatology, but a 
great many cases require simultaneous observations at 
several points or over areas. In many cases it is neces- 
sary to associate the observations in time and space 
with the help of synoptic weather maps. For Northern 
Hemisphere areas the best source material is the series 
of daily surface weather maps, extending back to 1899 
[84]. Since the end of 1945, the available issues include 
also five hundred millibar charts and the synoptic tele- 
grams on which the charts are based. Some of this 
synoptic material has been summarized into mean charts 
(for a detailed bibliography see [87]). Pressure values 
and storm tracks for ocean areas have also been placed 
on punched cards. 
It cannot be our task to list here all the multifold 
sources of climatological material. Only a very few 
standard works of an international character and some 
of the most important sources in the United States 
have been singled out [90]. 
Much of this material, excellent as it may be, re- 
stricts itself to only a few climatic elements. Pressuret 
temperature, and precipitation amounts are most com, 
mon. Some sources include elements such as fros- 
occurrence, which were thought to be of agricultural 
importance. On the whole, however, the standard cli- 
matic summarizations leave much to be desired as yet. 
Most of them are mean value climatologies. Frequently, 
the series from which they are obtained are inhomo- 
geneous. Another shortcoming is the lack of observa- 
tions other than the type desired for the purposes of 
synoptic meteorology. 
The climatologist can present a long list of observa- 
tional desiderata for applied purposes. For many of 
these the proper observational techniques are inade- 
quate or even nonexistent. Table I lists some such 
additional observations which would be most welcome 
in applied climatology. They are listed in two cate- 
gories. One comprises those where current techniques 
will yield useful data, and the present difficulty is that 
data are obtained at too few places; the other lists the 
elements for which new techniques of observation are 
needed. 
