THE computer sitting on Professor Tom Lyons desk today is more powerful than the whole university’s IT capacity when he started at Murdoch in 1975.

This is just one of the technological advances that have burst open the research opportunities in his field of meteorology over the past 25 years.

“For a start, we had no access to satellite data back then, and the only way we could measure air temperature was to stick a thermometer out the window of an aeroplane,” said Professor Lyons.

“Now we can generate a phenomenal amount of data that we could not have dreamt about even ten years ago.”

Professor Lyons and his research team have focused on the air flow in Perth and the surrounding region, and have consequently solved many problems such as the unusual turbulence patterns around the airport.

“Most of our work is now done through modeling atmospheric patterns because collecting data just gives us a series of snapshots,” said Professor Lyons.

“One of the most successful and simple models developed at Murdoch now enables Western Australian wheat farmers to predict the weather up to eight months in advance.”

Professor Lyons said that the combination of satellite technology and the recent development of good modeling techniques had enabled atmospheric scientists to identify phenomena such as the Greenhouse Effect and El Nino/El Nina.

In Western Australia, Professor Lyons said that the huge effect of the warm water in the Indian Ocean on the South-West rainfall levels was now a well-established phenomenon.

Although satellite technology had been vital for examining global weather patterns, Professor Lyons believed that local factors found on a scale of just a few metres were just as important.

Professor Lyons and his team are currently using the vegetation divide on either side of the rabbit-proof fence in the south-west region to determine the effect of vegetation and other factors on the earth’s surface.