METEOROLOGY IO3 



in Africa; that of 1923 is of particular interest because it was at 

 Azizia, an oasis some thirty miles inland from the Mediterranean 

 coast, that there occurred on 13th September 1922 a shade air 

 temperature of 136° F., the highest ever recorded under standard 

 conditions. The work of Fantoli (1930 and 1932) is also important. 



In Eritrea there is no official service, but climatological stations 

 have been established, and the main features of temperature and 

 rainfall are known. A useful paper by Eredia (1932) discusses the 

 seasonal distribution of rainfall in relation to the physical features 

 of the country. It is shown that the rainfall is heaviest (some forty 

 inches a year) on the eastern plateau slopes, whence it declines to 

 a few inches on the hot Red Sea coast, being there confined to the 

 winter months. On the plateau summit about 7,000 feet above 

 sea-level the rainfall, which comes in summer, is fairly heav)^, but 

 lower down, on the western side sloping to the Sudan, it is again 

 scanty. 



The late Duke of Abruzzi set up a number of stations in the 

 southern part of Italian Somaliland. These have furnished valuable 

 data which have been discussed by Eredia (1927). This territory, 

 though it lies in a latitude normally affected by the equatorial 

 rain-belt, has very scanty rainfall. The explanation is to be sought 

 in the disturbance of the normal equatorial circulation by the 

 Asiatic summer monsoon system. On the west side of Africa, on 

 the other hand, the equatorial rains are reinforced by monsoonal 

 influences. 



In Abyssinia, there was no weather service up to 1936, apart 

 from the few stations controlled by Egypt. The climate has been 

 studied by three British and Egyptian scientific missions, in con- 

 nection with the scheme for regulating the outflow of Lake Tana. 



NORTH-WEST AFRICA 



Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco (French and Spanish) have official 

 meteorological services and are well supplied with data. In par- 

 ticular, several stations have recently been established in Algeria 

 down the air route across the Sahara. The Institut de Meteorologie 

 et de Physique du Globe at Algiers serves as a centralizing base 

 for the French North African territories. 



In Tunisia the winter rainfall is quite heavy on the coast but 



