708 
the introduction of a bill into the Senate of the United 
States! to authorize the Coast Guard to construct an 
experimental nonpropelled seadrome ocean station. Al- 
though there are many questions concerning economy, 
logistics, and human factors involved in the floating 
weather station, it is feasible from an engineering point 
of view. The foregoing analysis shows that the develop- 
ment of a platform for meteorological purposes of this 
kind is necessary and must be encouraged. Continued 
development of fully automatic weather stations for 
use not only on such floating buoys (which could then 
be of far smaller size) but also on reefs and uninhabited 
islands is an important parallel endeavor. 
Arctic and Antarctic Stations 
As with the great oceans, so with the Arctic and 
Antaretic—the principal problems of filling out the 
network are not strictly meteorological ones. The prime 
difficulties in the Arctic and Antarctic are means of 
ingress and egress and methods of safe and suitable 
living in extremes of cold. Even if automatic stations 
are developed for polar regions (and this in itself pre- 
sents far greater problems than the corresponding ones 
for temperate zones), the access problem in con- 
nection with the maintenance of the stations remains. 
In the oceanic Arctic, the problems are somewhat differ- 
ent from those in the continental Antarctic. The fact 
that the Arctic Ocean is predominantly covered with 
sea ice also presents problems different from those of 
temperate and tropical oceanic areas. Surface vessels 
such as ice breakers can penetrate only a limited dis- 
tance into the ice fields and only at certain seasons of 
the year. 
The most promising methods of getting to and from 
stations in the Arctic Ocean are by aircraft or sub- 
marine. Whether transportation is by aircraft over the 
ice or by submarine underneath it, methods must be 
available to surface on the ice. Studies of arctic sea 
ice will permit this. The submarine may come up be- 
tween ice floes in open water or, by the use of some kind 
of boring device, afford access to its occupants through 
the ice. In the Antarctic, although aircraft are essential, 
especially designed surface vehicles are also necessary. 
Caterpillar tractors, designed to operate at extremely 
low temperatures, together with wanigans, such as are 
used in Alaska north of the Brooks Range, are of 
obvious utility. The various transportation methods 
for the Arctic and Antarctic (aircraft, submarine, and 
surface vehicles) have one thmg in common and that 
is that none of them have been developed especially for 
polar operations. Even aircraft operation under the 
climatic conditions of arctic and antarctic regions is 
unsatisfactory. With the present intense interest in 
polar matters in all fields of science, it seems most 
opportune to stress the development of special vehicles 
and methods of operation. 
With the solution of the transportation problem, or 
concurrently with its solution, the next problem is one 
1. U.S. Senate Bill S. 1009, February 17, 1949 (subsequently 
withdrawn). 
OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS 
of establishing and occupying semipermanent observ- 
ing stations in the Arctic. For such stations, saucer- 
shaped vessels, which would ride up over the ice in 
much the same manner as did the Fram, have been 
suggested. A more logical approach, however, is to 
use the ice itself as the floating platform. There is 
evidence [3] of the existence of ice floes which are many 
miles across and of the order of a hundred feet or more 
thick. Such floes would be able to withstand crushing 
by the general sea ice in the Arctic, which is only 6-12 
ft thick, and would be most suitable bases upon which 
to establish runways and stations. The use of ice as a 
floating platform would be a start in the direction of 
using materials in the Arctic itself for the establishment 
of stations there. It has been remarked that in the 
excellent stations which the U. 8S. Weather Bureau has 
established in cooperation with the Danish and 
Canadian governments (two above 80°N in the El 
lesmere Islands and four at or above 75°N) the supply 
problem could perhaps be eased if more attention were 
paid to the utilization of local resources, such as situat- 
ing the stations on coal deposits which are not far 
from the existing locations. Coal is not presently em- 
ployed as a fuel in these operations. Ice, once its engi- 
neering properties are known, might be used for build- 
ing, insulating, water supply, and fire fighting, as well 
as for many other purposes [5]. 
Evidence of an intensified attack on the antarctic 
occupation lies in the Norwegian-Swedish-British Ex- 
pedition in progress at the present time and in the plans 
of the Argentine government to establish two more 
meteorological stations on the antarctic continent [4]. 
Interim Measures 
It is evident that the solutions proposed above to 
the ultimate establishment of a world network present 
immense engineering problems and manifold questions 
of international cooperation which will clearly take 
many years to accomplish. The understanding of the 
mechanics of the general circulation of the earth’s 
atmosphere is the ‘“‘primary problem of meteorology 
on which scarcely a beginning has been made.” It is 
on the solution of this “that all basic improvement of 
weather forecasting is now waiting,’ as Dr. H. C. 
Willett? has said. It is evident that work along these 
lines cannot await the completion of the world network 
as envisaged here. Several interim measures have been 
suggested and have, to a limited extent, already been 
implemented. For general circulation studies based on 
extensive synoptic observations, one of the most 1m- 
portant things is the use of synoptic aerological data 
and, as Willett has pomted out: 
The observational basis of all study of the mechanics of the 
general circulation as a whole has been restricted to the 
troposphere of the Northern Hemisphere north of 20°N. 
This is particularly unfortunate when it is realized that 
probably this is the least important third of the atmosphere 
2. Private communication: ‘“The Needs in Synoptic Aero- 
logical Observations for the Study of the General Circulation,” 
1947. 
