History of Australian meteorology seminar
Powerhouse Museum
Saturday 14 June 2008
Target Theatre

Julian Holland
The idea of weather: developments in meteorology 1660-1860
Abstract: The Rev. William Scott arrived in Sydney in 1856 to take up his appointment as Government Astronomer of New South Wales. While the observatory was being built on Dawes Point, Scott established a network of meteorological observing stations across New South Wales, from Gabo Island and Albury in the south to Armidale and Moreton Island in the north. What was the conceptual basis for this meteorological network? This talk will examine the development of ideas, instruments and practices which underlay the framework of meteorological recording which Scott initiated in the late 1850s.
Biography: Julian Holland is a researcher and former museum curator with a specialist knowledge of historic scientific instruments.

Neville Nicholls
Using Australian weather observations to detect climate change:
problems and possibilities
Abstract: Instrumental observations of daily weather are available for some locations in Australia since the mid-19th century. Unfortunately, the use of these observations to document how the climate has changed involves some challenges. These include the need to take account of changes in instrumentation and the exposure of the instruments, changes in the timing of observations, urbanisation of the observing sites, changes to metric units, shifts in observing sites, and the replacement of human observers by automated instruments. I will discuss how these problems have, more or less, been overcome, and what the weather observations tell us about Australian climate change.
Biography: Neville Nicholls is an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at Monash University, after 35 years researching climate variability and change while at the Bureau of Meteorology. He is a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the organization that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Richard Whitaker
A brief history of the Bureau of Meteorology in New South Wales
Abstract: Established in 1908, the Bureau of Meteorology has, since then, maintained an important office in Sydney, responsible for the issue of all forecasts and warnings for the State of New South Wales.
Here we trace the 100 year history of the office and look at the numerous challenges resulting from the combination of sometimes wild weather, intense media focus and changing office accommodation.
In particular three key weather events will be reviewed – the two massive Sydney hailstorms of 1947 and 1999, as well as the crash of a Viscount airliner into Botany Bay in 1961 – this too the result of thunderstorm activity.
It is very much a story of progress and clearly points to the substantial gains made in weather forecasting during this time – a process hard won by the dedication of Bureau staff past and present.
Biography: Richard has been a meteorologist for thirty years, and was Senior Operational Forecaster in NSW for 9 years during this time. He has had extensive experience in weather presentation on radio and television as well as in designing graphical displays for the print media. He was the NSW Manager of the Special Services Unit, the commercial arm of the Bureau of Meteorology, from 1992 to 2002, and then left the Bureau in July 2002. He currently operates a small meteorological consultancy business.
He has been author, co-author and consultant editor of twelve books about the weather, including publications for Time-Life and Reader's Digest. He also wrote an historical coffee table publication on the photographic history of Sydney called 'Sydneyside' and recently a photographic essay called 'Disasters, events and moments that changed the world'.

Barry Hanstrum
Recent developments in weather forecasting in Australia
Abstract: New South Wales is subject to some of the most extreme storms experienced anywhere on earth. These storms include severe east coast lows such as the 'Queen's Birthday' Low which impacted Newcastle in June 2007, tropical cyclones such as 'TC137' which devastated the Northern Rivers region of NSW in 1954, giant hail associated with thunderstorms as occurred in Sydney in 1947 and 1999 and the dramatic summertime 'southerly busters' that sweep up the NSW coast, as occurred on New Year's Day in 2006. The talk will describe these various meteorological phenomena, their impact on NSW communities and the evolution of their detection and warning services in recent decades.
Biography: Barry Hanstrum has a passion for Australia's weather. After a career in the Bureau of Meteorology spanning more than 25 years in weather forecasting, particularly severe weather forecasting in Western Australia, he commenced in his current role as the Bureau's Regional Director for NSW in 2004. He has undertaken projects at the Bureau’s Research Centre in Melbourne investigating the Australian summertime cool change, cool-season tornadoes in Australia, and developed an automated guidance system for thunderstorm and severe thunderstorm forecasting in Australia

Emily O'Gorman
Divided ecology: defining meteorology's boundaries
Abstract: In 1956 the Murray and Darling Rivers flooded simultaneously, causing what remain the only floods across the whole Murray-Darling Basin since European settlement. Emergency Management today estimates the damage in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia at £30 million. In Mildura, on the Victorian side of the Murray River, a resident recalled that 'authorities' had left 'everyone unprepared for what did eventuate'. They had not received adequate warning of the flood’s peak. The previous year the Commonwealth Meteorology Act 1955 was implemented in Victoria, taking flood warning out of the responsibility of State Government meteorology as meteorologists were seen to be concerned with rainfall, not river flow. Food warnings had not been picked up by another department. That year of disastrous floods there were very few warnings as the environmental event was an administrative anomaly. This story is the departure point of this paper, which will discuss the history of meteorology and the bureaucratisation of ecology.
Biography: Emily O'Gorman is a PhD candidate in the History Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. Her thesis looks at floods in the Murray-Darling Basin from 1850 to the present. Her research interests include the history of science and environmental history.

Mike Bailey
Weathering the media
Abstract: Weather is humanity's most talked-about subject, so it's inevitable that mediums of mass communication embrace it. Newspapers were quick to feature even the roughest of early weather maps; radio learned just as quickly that temperatures and other weather figures were just as important as giving the time and playing good music; television seldom runs a news bulletin without a weather report; and the internet has given weather enthusiasts the chance to follow the adventures of highs and lows and more complex meteorological matters 24/7.
Packaging of weather material through the media has changed markedly as technology has developed to provide both better forecasts and forecasting tools, and more visually interesting presentation across electronic outlets. Mike Bailey will look at changes in weather presentation over the 30-plus years that he's been weathering the media - and, in true weather presenter style, will try to predict some that may be still to come.
Biography: Mike Bailey is one of the most identifiable and credible voices in local media. He's now weather presenter and environment reporter for National Nine News after taking a look at politics from the inside as a candidate for the federal seat of North Sydney in the recent election.
Prior to that, Mike was a part of both television and radio almost every day for more than 35 years, known recently for his weather segments on ABC-TV and radio networks across New South Wales each weekday and earlier for his work with commercial television, radio and print outlets.

Stephen Jones
The meteorological map: Russell to numerical weather prediction
Abstract: This paper will look at the development of the techniques for producing the weather map. In 1877 H.C. Russell began providing maps of the day's weather for publication in the Sydney Morning Herald the next morning. Over the next 75 years the mathematics for weather prediction developed and in 1950 the first computed weather forecast was produced. In 1957 at Melbourne University a 24 hour weather forecast was computed on CSIRAC (Australia’s first computer) and computer generated weather maps accompanied it. The Bureau of Meteorology now produces a combination of computed and hand-drawn weather maps for weather prediction on a regular basis.
Biography: Dr Stephen Jones is an assistant curator in the Information Technology and Communications section of the Powerhouse Museum. He has a long history in the electronic arts in Australia and has recently completed a manuscript detailing the history of the electronically generated image in Australia from the mid-1950s to 1975.

Denis Shephard
Blood in the tropics: investigating the impact of climate
on European settlers in north Queensland, 1907 to 1930
Abstract: The Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine was founded in Townsville in 1907-08 to investigate the challenges of establishing a stable European population in northern Australia. Blood studies and a series of experiments into the physiological responses of Europeans to living and working in tropical Australia were carried out. Some of the instruments and equipment used in those experiments are now in the National Historical Collection of the National Museum of Australia. This paper will examine both the experiments and the equipment. A particular focus will be placed on a microbe incubator. The Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine was succeeded by the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine within the University of Sydney in 1930.
Biography: Denis Shephard has been a curator at the National Museum of Australia for the past 16 years where he has worked on a diversity of collection and exhibition work. Currently, Denis is a member of the team developing exhibits for the proposed Creating a Country Gallery which will open in 2009. The Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine story will be one of the feature stories in that gallery.