Ignorance of weather conditions on the oceans costs the world hundreds of millions of property annually and the toll of human life is appalling when expressed in figures. To aid in preventing this enormous loss, much of which is unneccessary if the full measure of the methods that science within recent time has put at our disposal is utilized, the writer, as chief of the Weather Bureau, organized a sys tem of wireless observations from moving ships along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts that has enabled the forecaster to detect many hurri canes when they were entirely out of the range of our land stations and give full and timely warning of their approach. In 1912 he formulated and published a plan for the con struction of a daily weather map of the Adan tic Ocean by the relay from ship to ship of si multaneous observations and their charting at the Central Office of the Weather Bureau in Washington. With only two-words in the mes sage the location of the ship and the reading of the barometer can be conveyed. When the pressure of the air is plotted the direction and force of the wind will be known. The storm regions can be shown, and when hurricanes appear no ship carrying a receiving instrument need be unadvised of its location. for a high power message can be flashed from some coast wireless station which will, at the same instant, reach every vessel on the great ocean.
The first thing necessary to the inaugura tion of the proposed great ocean service is the right of way for messages, so that they may be quickly accumulated at some central • With the object of overcoming this di6iculty the writer was made a member of the Inter national Radio Congress that met in London in 1912, where, with the aid of the United States delegates, he secured the adoption of regulations that give to the observations needed in such a service the right of way over all messages except distress calls. The logic of events must eventually compel the cre ation of something so necessary to the needs of humanity, both on the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The return of our flag to the peaceful ways of ocean commerce and the pro tection of our fleet in time of war, would seem to require the proposed extension of the do main of the Weather Bureau.
Seasonal forecasts also seem to be one of the possibilities of the future. Abbot, Kim ball and other able men are studying the varia tions in solar radiation, the recurrence and fre quency of sun-spots and solar prominences, hoping by a comparison of data to trace some relation between them and the ever-varying seasons of the earth. Recent results are encouraging.
Wn.us L Moons, Professor of Meteorology. George Washington University.