§ Mr. Lagdenasked the Secretary of State for Air, in view of the accuracy of the American long-range weather forecasts, which rely on computing machinery for their results, if he will employ similar methods using computing equipment, in order to produce more reliable results in this country.
201W
§ Mr. H. FraserI do not think the United States Weather Bureau would claim that their long range weather forecasts are consistently better than those of the Meteorological Office.
I understand the Weather Bureau uses an electronic computer in the preparation of its 30 day "Outlooks" to calculate the trend of the weather over the first few days only. This does not appear to have any very significant effect on the success of the forecast for the period as a whole.
The present need in the problem of long range forecasting is for a better understanding of the dynamics of large-scale weather processes rather than for advanced computing equipment.