Southern Meteorological Service
The Southern Meteorological Service (SMS) is the weather service and development institute of the Union Australis, being carried over from the Confederate Institute of Weather Technology from the Ciric Confederacy. The service is primarily concerned with meteorological predictions, utilising advanced confederate weather technology combined with surveys of the global climate taken from satellites. The service also maintains a branch, named the Southern Institute of Weather Technology (SIWT), which is responsible for the development of technology oriented at utilising, predicting, and manipulating natural weather phenomena. The SMS employs scientists from all over the Union, though has thus far mostly employed meteorologists and physicists from the Ciric Confederacy.
Locations
The SMS is headquartered in the city of Stonewall, though it maintains offices in Mourn, Relacul, Theogiorick, Porto Vormouna, and all airfields within the Union. All of these off-site offices are required to return detailed weather data to the headquarters hourly, with airfield offices typically linked to a live data stream to provide the absolute most up-to-date information for forecasts for flights.
Forecasts
The SMS is responsible for providing weather forecasting for a number of subjects, drawing from all possible weather data collected at off-site offices, as well as from air and space craft used by the SMS. The SMS provides the following forecasts to the public through its online presence, as well as through news services:
- Weather forecasting
- Weather prediction models
- Shipping forecast
- Flight advisories
- Severe weather warnings
- Air quality
- Water quality
- Flash freeze predictions
- Unnatural weather (acid rain, nuclear fallout, volcanic ash, etc.)
- Space weather (solar flares, solar storms, meteor showers, etc.)
Technological Development
The SMS is also responsible for the development of devices meant to predict, harness, or manipulate the weather or natural weather phenomena. In the public eye, the most common type of device produced by these research programs are tornado warning systems and blizzard warning systems, which are a response to the antarctic's propensity for these types of severe weather (large expanses of flat land combined with high temperature variations near cities cause tornadoes to form, and this same temperature variation causes storms to form often, and severe thunderstorms often become blizzards because of the frigid temperatures of the antarctic). The SMS was also responsible for developing the electrolasers used by Union forces.
The SMS also uses weather modification on extreme weather patterns in order to weaken and stop the storms. This is mainly done through cloud seeding, as well as an opposite process involving spraying gases into a cloud to spread out the cloud particles and prevent precipitation. The SMS has also developed an "air bomb" that causes a massive blast of wind when it is detonated, and is used to destroy tornadoes before they can deal damage to citizens. The SMS is also in the testing phase of "Project Thunderdome", which is aimed at developing a way to disperse hurricanes before they can cause damage to civilian structures. Techniques include:
- Seeding the eye wall of a hurricane to cause it to collapse
- Using lasers to cause the hurricane to discharge lightning before it hits shore
- Pouring liquid nitrogen in the ocean to cool it and prevent the hurricane from obtaining its heat energy
- Pouring environmentally-friendly oils in the ocean to prevent droplet formation
- Dropping a highly absorbant polyacrylic acid polymer into the storm to soak up water; it would dissolve upon hitting the ocean
Many of these projects have been funded by Andromeda Labs, and the Andromeda Tech Corporation is a major player helping with Project Thunderdome.
