Historical perspective

Abstract

The 1960s was a remarkable decade for research in tropical meteorology. Tropical climatology was already reasonably understood, but little was known of its variability or that of daily tropical weather. Regularly sampled data and access to computers to process data became more readily available. The excitement of looking at these data, which no one else had studied before, must have been something like that of polar explorers in the early part of the century who made their way to places no one had ever been before.