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his death also carried his last paper on this subject (and one on atmospheric electricity).
When receiving weather reports by radio from ships near the central regions of typhoons he noticed (1925) that radio communication was relatively undisturbed by atmospherics—the crackles and bangs due to lightning discharges. This point was not really appreciated by others until the post-war years when it was found that tropical cyclones could not be reliably tracked with equipment designed to locate lightning flashes (sferics equipment). Some typhoons do contain thunderstorms—they can be almost continuous in the eye wall—but others have none. The reasons for this variable behaviour have not yet been adequately explained.
During the war years Fr Gherzi noticed coincidences between certain characteristics of the ionosphere and the air mass prevailing around the sounding station. He considered that the events were not unrelated and went on to use the association as an aid to weather forecasting (1946, 1950). Unfortunately, the matter has proved more complicated than Fr Gherzi implies in his papers and the method has not been adopted for general use.
INTERNATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL INTERESTS
In the Annual Report of the Director, Royal Observatory, Hong Kong for 1927, Mr Claxton wrote: 'Father Gherzi of the Zikawei Observatory, after patient experiments and with the utmost goodwill, has recently inaugurated a short-wave broadcast service by which we obtained at 9 hr 45 min the 6 hr observations from seven stations from the Yangsi and North China. The thanks of all concerned are due to Fr Gherzi for these valuable observations'. By personally receiving the Morse signals from ships and other countries Fr Gherzi helped to maintain good communication standards in the region; he would send terse, admonitory notes to wireless operators or meteorological services who did not follow good practices or keep to schedules. His Observatory was represented at the very first regional meeting of Directors of weather services which was held at Hong Kong in 1930 to decide on codes for signalling tropical cyclones and transmitting weather reports. Subsequently, in April 1934, Fr Gherzi and Mr Jeffries, Director of the Royal Observatory, Hong Kong travelled to Manila together to decide, with the Director of the Manila Observatory Fr M. Selga, on standardised storm warning procedures. Fr Gherzi also attended the