Abstract
IN recent years great advances have been made in our knowledge of the atmosphere. The increase in the number of observatories and the transmission of meteorological data from ships at sea have made material contributions to these advances. There are, however, still large areas of sea and land of which our knowledge is altogether inadequate for the advancement of science. Nowhere are there more significant gaps in the desirable network of stations than in polar regions. Observatories exist in Greenland, Jan Mayen, Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya, and Alaska, but throughout the length of Arctic Siberia and in most of Arctic Canada there are great areas from which no continuous series of observations are obtainable, and even the geographical features of a large part of the Arctic Ocean are unknown. The most northerly observatory is the Norwegian station at King's Bay, Spitsbergen. North of latitude 80°, there is not a single observatory, and even scattered data from the inner or ice-bound Arctic regions are very few and incomplete. In a recent lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, Dr. G. C. Simpson, the director of the Meteorological Office, said that little further advance in polar meteorology can be made by spasmodic meteorological observations. The short series of data brought back by exploring expeditions engaged primarily in other branches of work are not of great value. Permanent observatories alone can supply the want, and if these are provided with wireless, they can not only extend the area of the synoptic charts used in forecasting, but also reduce the area of the unknown for other general purposes of the science.
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Airships and Arctic Meteorology. Nature 124, 785–786 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124785a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124785a0