BAMOS 13
Fig. 8. The Fokker F27 research aircraft used during the intensive observational phases of the Cold Fronts Programme. The aircraft is equipped with Doppler wind finding equipment and a wide range of sensors for measuring thermodynamic and cloud microphysics parameters. It is a research facility for CSIRO managed by the Division of Cloud Physics.( Figure taken from Smith et al.( 1982)).
These were exciting times because it was clear that existing models of cold fronts developed for the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere were poor for interpreting the behaviour of the summertime cool change. A new model was badly needed and an ambitious multi-year programme of research with a major field component was established to develop such a model.
At an early stage of the CFRP, Michael Reeder, then a mathematics student at Monash University was looking for a Ph. D. project in dynamical meteorology and I steered him towards researching the cool change. It didn’ t take long for Michael to develop an understanding of the recently developed theories of frontogenesis by Brian Hoskins and others and Michael’ s subsequent research led to a series of publications culminating in fundamental elucidation of the cool change in the framework of the three-dimensional Eady problem for baroclinic instability( Reeder et al. 1991). Other notable contributions elucidating the structure of the cool change were made by John Garratt, Brian Ryan, and Bill Physick from CSIRO and by Ken Wilson, Harvey Stern, Barry Hanstrum and Sue Barrell from the Bureau of Meteorology.
My connections with Dr. Reg. Clarke, a senior scientist at CSIRO, led the two of us to organize an expedition in 1979 to study the morning glory cloud phenomenon of the Gulf of Carpentaria region. Morning glory cloud lines originate mostly from the northeast and are known now to originate on the western side of Cape York Peninsula through the interaction of the east and west coast sea breezes. However, on the last day of the 1979 expedition, a similar cloud line was observed that was moving from the south. This surprising observation, followed by several more over subsequent years, led to the hypothesis that cloud lines moving from the south were generated by cold fronts moving across the interior of Australia. At that time, little was known about the structure of such trailing cold fronts. This hypothesis led to studies of cold fronts across the interior of Australia, based on several field experiments. These fronts were shown to have a large diurnal component, weakening during the daytime as daytime mixing took hold and strengthening rapidly at night in connection with the formation of the nocturnal lowlevel jet. The strengthening was accompanied by a tendency to form undular bore-like structures during the night, the latter accounting for the origin of morning glory cloud lines from the south. An historical account of these studies of the dry season meso-meteorology of central and northeastern Australia can be found at the link:
https:// www. en. meteo. physik. uni-muenchen. de /~ roger /
See: Tropical cloud lines: The morning glory and related phenomena; Subtropical and tropical continental cold fronts; Heat lows.
— Roger Smith.