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Ron Hille

Ron Hille onboard the Jack Ryan deep sea drill ship.

Cyclone Inigo.

Weatherman's Smile Brings Frown To Drill Ship Workers

Whenever Ron Hille had a smile on his face, workers on the Jack Ryan drill ship knew they were in for a rough day. Ron the weatherman, as he was called on the ship, was in his element, getting up close and personal with mother nature, after spending most of his working career staring at a computer screen trying to figure out the vagaries of the weather for an increasingly varied and demanding audience.

Hille is a meteorologist and regional marketing manager with the Bureau of Meteorology's Special Services Unit (SSU), set up in 1990 to provide enhanced forecasts for specific clients and, in particular, the petroleum industry on and offshore. But he has recently added another feather to his cap after working as an onboard meteorologist with the Jack Ryan deep sea drill ship off the north west coast of WA and the Great Australian Bight.

Hille had just spent 29 days straight on the Jack Ryan, 300 km north of Broome, and was about to re-join the ship for a two-week stint at the Gnarlyknots-1 well, 325 km southwest of Ceduna, when PESA News interviewed him in April.

The Jack Ryan was scheduled for a nine-month stay in Australian waters, but that is likely to be extended to a year due to delays. The SSU provides targeted forecasts via fax, email or website. But the ship required an onboard meteorological presence to complement these services during its time off the Australian coast.

"When we tendered for the contract we said we would provide an onboard meteorologist, as well as providing a regular forecast from Perth", Hille said. "That was the first time ever in my knowledge that a meteorologist from the bureau has worked offshore for the oil and gas industry."

Hille's role on the Jack Ryan was to give the ship enough lead time to stop drilling in the event of a cyclone or other severe weather event, like a deep low pressure system, approaching. "They couldn't just move because there was a cyclone coming", Hille said. "They had to know three days before that they had better be pulling the pipe up to get the hell out of there because there was a cyclone bearing down."

But stopping an operation on a ship like the Jack Ryan is costly, which is why a meteorologist is onboard, providing quality and up to date advice which could potentially save the company which is funding the drilling operation millions of dollars in downtime. "When it comes to big decisions, I think the benefit of it is the human contact, the fact that you are there", he said.

"I gave briefings on the Jack Ryan every day and, even though they had received a hard copy of the forecast, the thing that they really get from you is your confidence in the forecast. They read your body language, they read everything else that is going on, and they can sense that it seems to be on track and they are confident the forecast is correct. This helps them with their decision which could cost millions of dollars based on what you are saying."

Based on the SSU forecast, the ship stayed connected when Tropical Cyclone Graham was in the neighbourhood back in March, which eventually bypassed the area the ship was in. "I describe the conditions, I don't recommend they hang on", he said. "I say this is what the weather conditions are going to be and the feedback that I've had from [Jack Ryan's clients] BHP in this case is they saved several million dollars [by not disconnecting].

"The alternative option, if they didn't have any meteorologists onboard, it is most likely they would have been more conservative and disconnected. It was obviously very cost effective for them to pay to have a meteorologist on board."

The Jack Ryan experience has been one of the highlights of Hille's meteorological career. "I absolutely loved it, because from my point of view I've been sitting in my ivory tower forecasting the weather for years and describing pretty horrible conditions to a lot of people, but I've never been immersed in it", he said.

The highlight of Hille's first stint on the ship was experiencing gale force winds, blowing 35 knots for several days, which generated 5-6 m high waves, sometimes peaking to 8-9 m. "It was exciting to experience the weather, to feel what gale force winds are like, so it was a real treat for me", he said. "I was fascinated with the sea rising up and seeing those sorts of waves and conditions and the squalls coming through, from a meteorologist’s point of view it was very exciting."

But his excitement and enthusiasm for big seas was not shared by the ship's crew. "They used to joke and say when the weather man is smiling we've got problems, it's going to be a bad day", he said. "But when the weather was calm I used to walk around fairly sort of flat and then they would say 'this is going to be a good day, Ron doesn't look so happy'."

The Jack Ryan experience has been a one-off opportunity in Hille's career. The bulk of his work is aimed at providing a specialised weather service for a range of clients ever since the SSU started up in 1990. "We kicked off here in Perth and the major contracts that we commenced the service with were in the petroleum industry", he said.

"Offshore rigs and platforms and shipping require a lot of detail in the forecast, we specialise in providing this information, and now service the majority of the offshore industry in WA." The SSU also has contracts with companies operating in the Timor Sea and Bass Strait. He said most offshore clients wanted location specific information regarding wind and sea state conditions and the expected development and track of cyclones.

In comparison to the general forecasts put out by the Bureau, the SSU provides site specific and tailored forecasts to the clients needs. "Our clients want a lot of information and we break it up into six-hourly intervals of the sea, swell, total waves, what the winds are, what the weather is", he said. "We forecast out to three to five days and sometimes extend to seven."

Cyclone warnings are a significant area of business for the SSU, with specific forecasts sent out to clients who could be affected by the cyclone. "We would tailor that information to the client and inform them that the cyclone was a certain bearing and distance from their location", Hille said.

"We would often provide extended forecasts for our clients because of the long lead time demanded in the offshore industry. They could need three to four days before they can pull up in the middle of a drilling programme."

The bureau has a phalanx of data sources all over the country and at sea to collect mountains of information that are processed on superfast computers. It relies on technologies as simple as the Mark I human eyeball – still one of the best forms of data collection going – to automatic weather stations and satellite and laser technology.

"There is no substitute for a human on the ground telling you exactly what is going on", he said. "There is no substitute for a human saying they can see lightning to the west, or thunder heard. Once we know that, we have a good idea what is going on." The raw data is collected and channeled into the capital cities throughout Australia, plotted onto a map and analysed every three hours, and also sent to head office in Melbourne.

Another vital range of high-tech tools is global computer models. "Because the world is connected everywhere, you can't figure out a front coming up to Australia without knowing exactly what is going on in Africa", Hille said. "So you have to work out what the weather is for the whole world, there is no way of looking at it in isolation."

The bureau shares a Cray super computer, with an enormous processing capacity of 240 Giga flops per second, with the CSIRO, to crunch some serious numbers. "The computing power in meteorology is phenomenal and then we use several models including Australian, American, British, Japanese and European versions", he said.

"They all produce products outlining the weather for the next seven days, which currently is the practical limit in showing some skill in predictability." Hille said most countries have their own models because although global, they are tuned for the best results over their region.

Hille said most people who become meteorologists have a physics or, in some cases, a mathematics background. He came to meteorology relatively late in his working career, having spent the first 14 years in the workforce, starting out as a technical officer with the then PMG, later Telstra.

But he was always interested in physics, astronomy and science in general. So while working as an instructor at a Telstra training school Hille studied for a physics degree and transferred to the bureau in 1984. All new recruits spend a year in Melbourne to receive a graduate diploma in meteorology before being posted to forecasting centres in capital cities around Australia.

As well as keeping tabs on cyclones and providing tailored forecasts to clients, Hille also spends a lot of time on the road, visiting existing and potential clients and obtaining feedback about the SSU's services.

"I routinely tour the Pilbara, flying offshore to the islands and to various drilling and production platforms like North Rankin", he said. "I give a presentation on cyclones, how last season went, and what the bureau thinks is going to happen for the next six months. So that is the sort of work that I do and I also go up to the Timor Sea via Darwin." Hille, in conjunction with the regional manager of the SSU, also provides similar briefings to the senior management of clients' companies back in Perth.

He said getting feedback was a crucial and rewarding part of the work that the bureau's special services unit provides. "Our clients demand a pretty high standard and you are much more accountable in the commercial section for what you do, and that keeps you on your toes", he said.

"But it also makes it enjoyable. Our clients let us know if our forecasts aren't on track. We then look into that event and put strategies in place to prevent that happening again, but we also get feedback from clients when we are doing a good job."

Trying to predict what the weather will be can also be a pretty frustrating and stressful business. "We have a very good track record but it's a very complex job and there will be situations that will catch you out occasionally because the weather is dynamic and it can change so fast", he said. One of the biggest challenges meteorologists face is predicting the movement of cyclones.

"People want to know where they are going and when you can't give them a definite answer you go home very frustrated because you are dealing with Mother Nature", he said. "Even with a lot of science and tools at our fingertips, at the end of the day Mother Nature has the final say and you can come unstuck occasionally, and no-one is happy when that happens."

The night before PESA News interviewed Hille, Tropical Cyclone Inigo, one of the most intense cyclones in Australia's history, with a central pressure estimated to be 900 hecta pascals – that's a category five cyclone, top of the range on the severity scale – had caused a lot of nervousness along the North West Shelf area before it harmlessly crossed the coast near Mardie on the 8th of April as a category one cyclone. It did, however, produce heavy rain and some local flooding in the Mardie region.

"The bureau did exceptionally well with Cyclone Inigo. It picked well in advance that the cyclone would re-curve and move towards the Pilbara coast, and that's because of a combination of good model guidance, and also we now have a good handle on where to look for the steering winds in the upper layers of the atmosphere", Hille said.

But problems can emerge when the models start giving different predictions about where they believe the cyclone is heading. "That is when you are really tested and when the game gets tricky", he said. "When they diverge with different opinions about what is going to happen, we are sitting scratching our heads thinking what are we going to back here."

It then becomes basically a process of elimination. " We look at the recent track and ask which model is the one that's got the best handle on the current situation, you do these sorts of things but that's when it gets a bit awkward."

Cyclones are not going to be an issue for Hille for a while now as he prepares to take on a new challenge, along with three other meteorologists during the Gnarlyknots-1 project, predicting the weather patterns of the Southern Ocean in autumn/winter.

The SSU has been preparing for this project with Woodside since last September. "We've been practising forecasting and verifying the results to get a feel of how accurate our forecasts are in the Gnarlyknots region", Hille said. "We've also been analysing a number of computer models to determine which one produces the best results and reliability for the area."

Hille said there were quite a few applicants for the meteorologists' positions on the Gnarlyknots-1 project, and all applicants, including himself, have some concerns about seasickness. "The situation up north was usually pretty good weather when there were no cyclones around, but there is going to be a bit of swell in the Bight and the probability of big low pressure systems coming through is pretty high."
Hille is already looking forward to getting back into Mother Nature's face and taking in the opportunity to embrace its fury. But the crew on the Jack Ryan are probably hoping that he isn't walking around smiling very often.

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