248 EXPLORATION OF ATMOSPHERE AT SKA BY KITES. 



when the conditions were favorable, would go far toward showing 

 whether the conditions prevailing over the ocean differ from those 

 above the land, and would also furnish information about the upper 

 air in atmospheric situations that can not be explored with kites at a 

 fixed station. So far as known, meteorological records had not been 

 obtained before last summer from kites flown from a moving vessel, 

 although during the first half of the last century registering thermom- 

 eters were lifted b}^ kites several hundred feet above the Arctic 

 ocean, when the vessel was fast in the ice. The German Antarctic 

 vessel Gauss and the Discovery of the English Antarctic expedition 

 are each equipped w ith meteorological kites, which were to l>e used on 

 the Southern voyages commenced in August, 1901, but it is to be 

 feared that this branch of the meteorological work, being subordinate 

 to the main aims of the expeditions, will always be sacrificed to them. 

 In any case, it must be remembered that scientific kiteflying demands 

 practiced and skillful operators, and without them and much reserve 

 apparatus must yield mediocre results. To make these observations 

 properly requires that the vessel be completel}^ under the control of 

 the meteorologist, who ma}" then explore the heights of the atmos- 

 phere, just as the hydrographer and zoologist have explored the depths 

 of the ocean. Had the British CJmlleiiger expedition been provided 

 with our modern kite apparatus and accompanied by meteorologists 

 trained in their use, it might have accomplished the double task of 

 sounding the oceans of air and water. 



Although observations above all the oceans are valuable, the explo- 

 ration of the equatorial region is the most important, since, with the 

 exception of a few observations on the Andes and on mountains in 

 central Africa, we know nothing of the thermal conditions existing a 

 mile or two above the equator, and onh' w^hat the clouds tell us of the 

 currents in which they float. The need of such data to complete our 

 theories of the thermodynamics of the atmosphere was urged by Pro- 

 fessor Woeikof , of St. Petersburg, at the Meteorological Congress of 

 1900 in Paris. North and south of the equator, within the trade-wind 

 belts, kites might be employed to determine the height to which the 

 trades extend, and also the direction and strength of the upper winds, 

 concerning which the high clouds, rarely seen in those latitudes, fur- 

 nish our only information. Professor Hildebrandsson, of Upsala, who 

 is an eminent authority on the circulation of the atmosphere, believes 

 that a meteorologist on a steamship provided with kites, and also with 

 small balloons to ascertain the drift of the upper winds when there are 

 no clouds, by .making atmospheric soundings between the area of high 

 barometric pressure in the North Atlantic and the constant southeast 

 trades south of the equator, and in this way investigating the temper- 

 ature and flow of the so-called anti-trades above the surface Avinds, 

 could solve in three months one of the most important problems in 



