Page 249 - NS-2 Textbook

244 NAUTICAL SCIENCES

Those who go down to the sea in ships fight a continuous battle with the weather. A Navy destroyer noses into a heavy sea in the central Pacific.

synoptic meteoroiogJj (a general view of the weather). It is highly developed. This increased knowledge became crit-
our modern system of observing and collecting weather ical for safe commercial, passenger, and military ilights.
data. Great progress has been made in meteorology dur-
Significant advances in the science of meteorology ing recent years, but much remains to be learned. Con-
were made during the two world wars. A Norwegian siderable ammmts of money and a great deal of research
meteorologist, Vilhelm Bjerknes, developed the air-mass time are spent every year on the weather. Today, the
and polar-front theories of weather. These theories are weather satellite is an indispensable tool of meteorolo-
the basis for many of the forecasting rules used today. gists. From its vantage point high above Earth, it sends
A network of reporting stations was established, and so back accurate photographs of cloud cover and storm
the means of collecting data were greatly improved. As fronts, and it records temperature, hwnidity, and other
aviation advanced,. air-mass frontal forecasting became weather phenomena.