30 abstracts: oceanography 



Hence the average gradient departs more and more from the adiabats 

 as the surface is approached. These deductions are fully supported by 

 the temperature records of sounding balloons. 



Morning convections, therefore, necessarily are shallow, since the 

 dynamic cooling of the rising air quickly brings its temperature to or 

 below that of the surrounding atmosphere. The same conditions also 

 limit the height of the afternoon convections, though these generally 

 attain to greater elevations than do those of the forenoon. W. J.H. 



METEOROLOGY. — Some weather proverbs and their justification. 

 W. J. Humphreys, Weather Bureau. Popular Science Monthly, 

 78: 428-444. 1911. 



A large number of weather proverbs dealing with the colors of the 

 sky, haloes, coronas, clouds and other natural phenomena are given, 

 and both their causes and relation to weather changes explained in non- 

 technical terms. 



Only those proverbs are quoted that concern natural phenomena and 

 which have more or less scientific justification for the predictions they 

 make. W. J. H. 



OCEANOGRAPHY.— Arctic tides. Rollin A. Harris. 103 pp. 2 

 figs, and map. Government Printing Office. 1911. 



In preparing this paper, which gives in detail the observations by the 

 Peary expedition, 1908-1909, and by the expedition under Mikkelsen 

 and Leffingwell, 1906-1907, one of the principal aims has been to bring 

 together all available results pertaining to tides in Arctic waters. Scien- 

 tifically, the most important of these is probably the table of harmonic 

 constants for 50 stations, all but one of which lie north of the 60th parallel. 

 The lunitidal intervals and ranges of tide are given for more than 200 

 points or stations in the Arctic Regions. The mean range of tide varies 

 from 23 feet in Ashe Inlet, Hudson Strait, to 0.2 foot at Pitlekaj, on the 

 Siberian coast not far west of Bering Strait. 



A cotidal map shows the times and ranges of the semidaily tide, so 

 far as known, and the estimated times in regions where no observations 

 have been taken. The semidaily tides of the Arctic Ocean are derived 

 almost entirely from those of the Atlantic ; for, the semidaily tidal forces 

 are small in high latitudes and vanish at the Pole. Hence the extensive 

 progressions from the Atlantic into and over the Arctic. Five "no- 

 tide points," or points where the range of the semidaily tide becomes 

 zero, are indicated upon the map. 



