The use of microseisms in hurricane detection

Abstract

At the outbreak of the war, the collection, correlation, and administration of the Hurricane Weather Service was in the hands of the United States Weather Bureau, assisted by weather-reports as practicable from the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy. However, the Hurricane Weather Service felt keenly the lack of usual weather-reports because wartime-restrictions, with radio silence on ships, and with ships proceeding in convoys rather than at random over the ocean, had deprived weather-forecasters of weather reports over vast ocean-areas which were normally obtained from merchant-ships and other sources. The absence of these reports from ships at sea had left unreported vast expanses of ocean where destructive storms might easily form and attain dangerous proportion. Thus, wartime-demands for accurate aerological data over these vast expanses created a problem of major proportions for the Armed Forces and the United States Weather Bureau. The Joint Meteorological Committee, a working sub-committee for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, considered the problem.