ANTARCTIC ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION 927 
and direction, despite marked pressure fluctuations at 
several antarctic stations, notably the Gauss, has been 
cited to prove that these waves, and not cyclones, con- 
trol the weather processes. 
Northwestward travel of the waves was assumed by 
Simpson because of their progressively later occurrence 
at stations at greater and greater distances northwest 
of Framheim, the easternmost of the three 1911 Ross 
Sea stations. Superposition of barograms for the three 
stations shows good correspondence, with such time 
lags in occurrence of crests and troughs that Simpson 
concluded the waves ‘‘travel with a lmear wave front... 
along a direction parallel to a lme joing Cape Adare 
and Framheim” at about 35 mph. In all, Simpson found 
waves in the barograms of eight antarctic and sub- 
antarctic stations, but only the three Ross Sea locations 
were simultaneous and close enough to indicate the 
direction of travel. 
From detailed analyses, Simpson concluded that 
west-moving pressure waves alter the existing local 
pressure distributions so as to cause blizzards and other 
phenomena, not readily explained otherwise, at various 
antarctic stations. This he considered stronger proof of 
the waves’ existence than the apparent motion; for his 
own station, ‘‘it is difficult to see any close relationship 
between the winds at Cape Evans and the actual 
pressure waves, as would be the case if the pressure 
waves were due to the passage of high- and low-pressure 
systems.” 
Using data subsequently published for three stations 
to the northwest of the Ross Sea, Loewe extended the 
general westward movement by comparison of baro- 
grams for Macquarie Island, Cape Denison, and Queen 
Mary Land with each other and with barograms for 
Cape Evans. Healso founda higher statistical correlation 
between pressures at pairs of these stations, assuming 
westward motion at the rate indicated by this compari- 
son, than for eastward motion corresponding to the 
average travel times of subantarctic pressure systems. 
However, since ‘‘the southwest-to-northeast direction 
of wave fronts in the Ross Sea, as found by Simpson, 
cannot be extended as far west as Cape Denison,”’ 
Loewe postulated that ‘the crest and trough lines of the 
waves west of the Ross Sea run rather from west to east, 
the waves radiating outwards from the continent,” so 
that the 35-mph speed would be maintained. But his 
waves reach Macquarie Island, twice as far from Cape 
Evans as is Cape Denison, too quickly for such a 
pattern, and his later finding that waves reach Queen 
Mary Land 19 hours later than Cape Denison, 1300 
miles due east, requires either northwestward motion 
or rapidly accelerating westward progress. 
Objections. Travelling pressure waves were deemed 
unnecessary by Meinardus, Reuter, Kidson, Palmer, 
and Ramage to account for observed conditions in 
Antarctica. Meinardus considered the waves found for 
the different stations as indicating the “unrest of the 
atmosphere,’ and insisted that the Gauss’s weather 
phenomena were adequately explained by the eastward 
passage to the north of pressure systems which are not 
circular; Simpson had assumed circular systems in prov- 
ing that the Gawss winds were too steady to be cyclonic. 
However, Meinardus admitted [14] that in a few cases 
pressure waves from the interior could account for the 
Gauss weather. 
Palmer was not so generous: after reviewing 
Meinardus’ discussion, he redrew some of the 1902 
maps on the same patterns he used for a 1932 series 
based on whaler [96] reports and concluded that Simp- 
son’s “interpretation of the Gauss observations was, to 
say the least, far-fetched,” and that ‘“‘there is no evi- 
dence for the existence of Simpson’s ‘pressure waves’ 
in the far southern Indian Ocean.” 
In his discussions of Shackleton’s 1907-9 expedition 
and Mawson’s 1911-14 data, as well as elsewhere, 
Kidson maintained that passage of complex frontal 
systems could account for all the observed pressure 
and weather phenomena, including the apparent west- 
ward motion of pressure maxima. This motion he veri- 
fied for Simpson’s original three stations by superim- 
posing curves of the average pressure difference for 
each two hours before and after pressure maxima and 
minima at Cape Evans and the corresponding values at 
Framheim 9.1 hours earlier and at Cape Adare 10.7 
hours later, finding ‘remarkably close relationship be- 
tween the pressure changes at the three stations.” 
For the 1912-13 data, in which Loewe ‘found pres- 
sure waves radiating outward from the antarctic conti- 
nent,” Kidson agreed that: 
On the average, the changes at Adélie Land lag considerably 
behind those at Cape Evans. ... The amount of this lag is, 
however, very variable. Sometimes it amounts to practically 
nothing and there are even occasions when changes occur 
earlier at Adélie Land than at Cape Evans. It would be 
extremely difficult to account for all phases of the relationship 
between the two stations on the basis of Simpson’s waves... . 
It is not possible to account for the Queen Mary Land pressure 
variations as being due to waves which have passed Fram- 
heim, Cape Evans, Cape Adare, and Adélie Land... . [It is] 
still more difficult to imagine. . .that the waves which have 
reached Adélie Land 131% hours after Cape Evans pass Mac- 
quarie Island only 7 hours later. 
He explained the whole mystery by assuming that 
“the fronts are, on the average, inclined at a large angle 
to the meridian. In the Ross Sea region, indeed, they 
must lie almost east and west.” Kidson’s table of the 
mean travel times of fronts indicates “the average 
interval in hours after the passage of Queen Mary Land 
at which each station would be passed”: Framheim 39, 
Cape Evans 48, Cape Adare 55, Adélie Land 57, Perth 
68, Macquarie Island 114, ete. 
All the phenomena which Simpson explained as due 
to pressure waves, Ramage attributed to the passage of 
Types A or D of the six types of cyclones which he 
found in a detailed single-station analysis of two years 
of Little America data; these two types, both moving 
eastward over the Ross Sea north of Little America and 
one (D) later curving southward, ‘make up 35 percent 
of the cases considered,’ and two pressure-wave ex- 
amples cited by Simpson were, to Ramage, D types: 
