Some notes on the climate of the British Solomon Islands

The Solomons are among the wettest regions of the globe. Among twenty-four stations having 7 years or more of complete years’ records to 1963, only four had a mean annual rainfall below 100 in. Pending full analysis of records from a scattered, but growing, network of climatological stations taking upper-air observations in the south-west Pacific, it seems that there is a basic easterly flow of air, with wave-type perturbations, and surface vortical circulations having a generally westerly movement. South of the equatorial perturbation belt, and dominating weather over the Solomons during the larger part of the year, are the south-easterly variables, or ‘trades’, themselves marked by zones of convergence that may be related to passage of meridional fronts along the root-zone of the south-easterlies, far south of the Solomons. These may be responsible for the spells of wet weather that occur during the south-easterly months, during some of which quite exceptional conditions of cloudiness and precipitation occur. The Royal Society Expedition encountered one such in 1965; more than 120 in. of rain were recorded in 2 weeks at a gauge on the southern side of Guadalcanal; severe landslip and flood damage occurred quite widely in the Solomons and adjacent areas