922 
If this bay or gulf is as large as prelimimary reports 
indicated, the weather sequence could readily be ex- 
plained in terms of a family of occluded cyclones 
entering from the north and stagnating there. In fact, 
the weather reported by Ellsworth is evidence that this 
coastal feature is extensive. There is a strong possi- 
bility that the general pressure field during this period 
was considerably lower than at Dundee Island, where 
the flight started in good weather (high pressure), so 
that the altimeter readings of the heights of the camps 
(and the various mountains) may be too high by as 
much as 1000 ft or even more. 
At any rate, the variable winds, chiefly southeast, 
recorded by Ellsworth from 28 November to 4 De- 
cember at 80°S, 104° to 115°W, do not fit Lamb’s 
anticyclonic cell at 80°S, 90°W [83], and are hardly 
compatible with “the anticyclone located near 120°W”’ 
inferred by the Highjump aerologists [2] twelve years 
and two months later. Perhaps those two months are 
significant, and the anticyclone, varying from 90°W 
to 120°W, develops only in late summer; perhaps the 
1946-47 summer saw a northward displacement of an 
anticyclone which in late 1935 was centered much far- 
ther south. 
These are some of the problems of Antarctica’s anti- 
cyclone, which exists only around the edges according 
to Meinardus and Shaw, is a thin layer according to 
Simpson, Barkow, Kidson, and Grimminger, is broken 
up into several cells according to Lamb and the Navy 
aerologists, shrinks markedly from winter to summer 
according to Serra and Ratisbonna, Coyle, and Gen- 
tilli, and is a major feature fed by an upper cyclone 
according to Hobbs, with Palmer considering the upper 
cyclone to be an abstraction derived from averages of 
widely varying conditions. 
CYCLONES 
Mariners encountered and named the ‘roaring for- 
ties” several centuries ago, and later reached and named, 
with more alliteration, the “furious fifties” and ‘“‘shriek- 
ing sixties.” But only slowly has the meteorological 
nature of these subantarctic “brave west winds” be- 
come known, and there is still much to be learned 
about them. The type and extent of the frontal zones 
surrounding Antarctica are far from established, the 
number and character of air masses are uncertain, and 
the formation, travel, and dissipation of subantarctic 
cyclones are still subjects of speculation. Yet under- 
standing of these processes is fundamental to any theory 
of the meteorology of Antarctica, because almost all 
the weather phenomena thus far encountered (around 
the coasts, the only part so far studied) appear related 
to systems impinging on the continent from the sur- 
rounding seas. 
Knowledge of weather processes over the southern 
oceans has kept pace with Northern Hemisphere find- 
ings as well as the scanty observations have permitted. 
As late as 1929 Barlow [102] said that the subantarctic 
“depressions travel from west to east around the globe 
in nearly unbroken succession,” as had been similarly 
POLAR METEOROLOGY 
assumed for the Northern Hemisphere. Emergence of 
the concept of cyclone life cycles and cyclone families 
was traced in detail by Palmer [89], as background for 
his preliminary (1942) theory of subantarctic meteor- 
ology. 
This theory appears in more mature and concise form 
in the Handbook of Meteorology, in an article [18] cred- 
ited to “Civilian Staff, Institute of Tropical Meteor- 
ology, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico,” but actually writ- 
ten in 1944 by Palmer. It describes quasi-permanent 
anticyclones lying along 30°S in the central South At- 
lantic and Indian Oceans and the eastern Pacific Ocean, 
with “a train of warm migratory anticyclones” be- 
tween each pair; between these migratory anticyclones 
are found “inverted V-shaped” troughs extending north- 
ward from great closed cyclonic systems ‘‘somewhat 
similar to the stationary Icelandic and Aleutian lows 
of the Northern Hemisphere but, unlike those depres- 
sions, moving from west to east with the anticyclones 
to the north.” 
Even more extensive than Palmer’s first treatise was 
Kadson’s series [75] of daily weather maps for 1912 for 
all Australia and New Zealand and the region south- 
ward almost to the Pole, using data of the Australasian 
Antarctic Expedition and others. A pioneer in the ap- 
plication of frontal analysis to the Southern Hemis- 
phere, he drew very involved systems to account for all 
the meagre observations, but did not “make analysis 
conform very strictly with kmematic laws” and tended 
to ignore the contrast of sea and land. 
KGdson died on 12 June 1939 without writing the 
final summary discussion of his work. His charts and 
analyses, made during the 1930’s but not published 
until 1946, seem out of date, but as Gibbs [73] pomted 
out, “he was a pioneer of frontal analysis in the southern 
hemisphere and was using a new and somewhat un- 
familiar tool of analysis, with a particularly scanty 
observational network. . . .His work should be accorded 
recognition for its pioneering aspect but his conclusions 
may be discarded where later, more soundly based 
evidence disproves them.” Gibbs also emphasized that 
he studied conditions throughout the year while most 
other reports deal with summer conditions only. 
Three extensive reviews [67, 72, 80] of Kidson’s work 
agreed as to its historical value, but took issue with 
various aspects. Lamb cited summertime ‘evidence of 
a distinct change of regime in the atmospheric circula- 
tion in the higher southern latitudes east and west of 
about the hundredth meridian. Pomts west of 100°E 
come under the influence of systems circulating south- 
wards from the Indian Ocean and often recurving to- 
wards the west in their later stages,” involving a west- 
ward movement which Kidson did not conceive. 
Fronts. Kidson felt that his charts proved that there 
is no ‘continuous polar front encircling the southern 
hemisphere in high latitudes”; G.C.S. (Simpson?) [72] 
doubted this conclusion. Meinardus [14] was not sure 
that the boundary between continental and marine air 
“should be considered as the polar front,” but conceded 
that such boundaries were quite marked on the east 
