J. S. Marshall Radar Observatory - History

History

In 1862, a first Weather Observatory was built by McGill University. The instruments were donated by Dr. Charles Smallwood (MD), who had personally taken weather data with them since 1840. This station became one of the first in the weather station network set up after the telegraph became ubiquitous.

In 1943, "Project Stormy Weather" was assigned to J.S. Marshall by the Department of National Defence. The aim was to find a use for noise in radar echoes that had proved to be from weather. Marshall and his doctoral student Walter Palmer later received recognition for their work on the drop size distribution in mid-latitude rain that led to the rain rate relation to radar reflectivity (Z-R relation). Following World War II, Marshall and R.H. Douglas formed the "Stormy Weather Group" at McGill University and continued their work.

Different radars were used by the Stormy Weather Group to research the characteristics of precipitation at Dawson College, continuing the tradition of meteorology at McGill. It was decided to build a new facility in 1968 in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, on the western tip of Montreal Island and to transfer research activity from Dawson College to this facility. This new observatory was later renamed the J.S. Marshall Radar Observatory in honor of its founder.

Read more about this topic:  J. S. Marshall Radar Observatory

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.
    Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)