Abstract
THE annual report of the Director of the Meteoro logical Office for the year ended March 31, 1934 (London: H.M. Stationery Office. 1s. net) is on the same general lines as previous reports, but is somewhat longer, numbering sixty pages; this ex pansion has its counterpart in an all-round increase in the activities of most of the different sections of the Office, in particular as regards the number of persons or institutions that were supplied with meteorological information, particulars of which are given in the report. In one respect, however, this report differs from those of recent years; it is made more self-contained by a modification of the intro ductory matter into a fairly detailed exposition of the normal work of the Meteorological Office, especially that part of it connected with synoptic meteorology which involves the collection of data broadcast by foreign countries and by ships at sea, and the supply of such data for the British Isles and neighbouring seas in return; little or no know-ledge of such matters is assumed on the part of the reader. The statistics relating to the work performed in response to external demands for information show in some cases a striking rate of increase; for ex ample, the forecast service dealt with 10,166 inquiries for the Press compared with 8,705 in the previous year, an advance that cannot wholly be explained by the abnormal weather of 1933-34, although this was doubtless partly responsible for it. In the section concerned with British climatology, where inquiries about past weather, some of which are of a very detailed character, are dealt with, the number of such inquiries was 2,222, and it is stated that in comparison with the annual figure ten years back, this represents a six-fold increase. The report not only summarises the activities of the branches of the Office at headquarters, located in Kingsway, London, and at Exhibition Road, South Kensington, but also those of the observatories and of the branches in Scotland, Malta, Egypt and Iraq.
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Work of the Meteorological Office. Nature 134, 602 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134602b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134602b0