GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
RESEARCH
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Operational and research activities continued to grow as a result of the ever-increasing demand for services for aviation, shipping, industry and the general public. Investigations were carried out on meteorological and geophysical problems in connection with various development projects in the Colony such as the extension of the runway at the Hong Kong International Airport, the design of High Island Dam, the construction of the Kwai Chung Container Terminal and the planning of underground transport.
Considerable efforts were devoted to the improvement of existing techniques of forecasting rainfall amount, tropical cyclone movement and cold surges. Methods were also developed for the prediction of frost, rime and low temperatures.
Composite cross-sections of cloud distribution were prepared from satellite pictures for the analyses of westward-moving wave disturb- ances and tropical cyclones in the western Pacific and South China Sea. Experiments were initiated to study cloud movement in tropical cyclones by the sequential display of Polaroid radar pictures.
The Royal Observatory continued to co-operate with several other overseas scientific institutes and the World Meteorological Organi- sation in special research projects in seismology, radioactivity, marine climatology and atmospheric chemistry. In co-operation with the University of Hong Kong, the Observatory will soon resume magnetic observations at a new station near Tate's Cairn.
YEAR'S
THE YEAR'S WEATHER
During 1970 many countries in the region suffered from the effects of typhoons and cyclones. There were disastrous floods or tidal waves reported in Queensland in January, Djakarta in February, Korea in July, Japan in August, the Philippines twice in October and once in November. A cyclone with tidal waves swept through East Pakistan on Friday, November 13, flooding a vast area and there was a great loss of life. Hong Kong experienced some flooding in May but nothing catastrophic.
In Hong Kong the year as a whole was slightly wetter and cloudier than normal but average temperatures were nearly normal. Six tropi- cal cyclones affected the Colony but none of them did much damage.