SOME CLIMATOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF THE ARCTIC AND SUB-ARCTIC 
By F. KENNETH HARE 
McGill University 
INTRODUCTION 
The Arctic is pioneer territory for the climatologist. 
For generations, students of the atmosphere have de- 
pended for their views of the arctic circulation upon 
hypotheses rather than facts. Because it has lain be- 
yond the reach of large-scale observation, the Arctic 
has been the happy hunting ground of partisan theo- 
rists. One sometimes suspects that the compilers of 
world maps of pressure, temperature, and precipita- 
tion distribution have breathed a sigh of relief when 
they reached the Arctic, for here at last was a region 
where statistics were rarely troublesome. For every 
painstaking study of the calibre of Sverdrup’s work 
on the Maud, or Georgi’s at Hismitte, there have been 
tens of superficial interpretations. 
Until World War II the initiative in the climato- 
logical study of the Arctic rested with the Scandi- 
navians, and to some extent (chiefly since 1930) with 
the Soviet Union. The growth of air transport and the 
unstable international situation have altered the North 
American viewpoint, and both Canada and the United 
States are now belatedly committed to a large-scale 
meteorological invasion of high latitudes. That it has 
taken so long to awaken our interest in this vital field, 
and then only under the grimmest necessity, is no 
tribute to our scientific initiative. 
Throughout the Arctic, lack of observational data 
is an acute problem. Except along the subarctic mar- 
gin, long observational series are extremely rare. Enor- 
mous areas, like the permanent pack ice of the Arctic 
Ocean, are entirely unknown. Though the situation is 
improving rapidly, it will-be some time before thor- 
oughly standardised climatological normals will be 
available for enough stations to allow the preparation 
of reasonably accurate distribution maps across the 
Arctic. Even then the pack-ice belt will remain the 
largest observational gap in the Northern Hemisphere. 
It is not proposed in this article to attempt a general 
account of the physical climatology of the Arctic. A 
brief review of the more important literature will be 
presented, but thereafter attention will be directed 
towards certain specialised fields in which scholarly 
research is possible with existing materials. For the 
moment these seem to have more to offer than broad 
syntheses. 
The terms ‘‘Arctic” and “sub-Arctic” require defi- 
nition. The Arctic is usually regarded as consisting of 
the tundra lands beyond the poleward limit of tree 
growth. The isotherm of 50F (10C) for the warmest 
month happens to coincide very roughly with the limit, 
and is often taken as the arctic boundary. At sea, 
those areas heavily affected by coastal and pack-ice 
are properly regarded as arctic. The sub-Arctic has no 
accepted connotation. The author usually applies it 
to the Boreal forest region of the Northern Hemisphere, 
that is, the great ring of coniferous forest stretching 
from Alaska to Labrador and from Norway to eastern 
Siberia. Neither definition, however, is rigorously ad- 
hered to in the following account. 
Previous General Literature. Apart from certain brief 
reviews like that of Nordenskjéld [45], no general cli- 
matology of the arctic regions has been attempted. 
The available literature is thus regional in scope and 
must be discussed on this basis. 
Over the Arctic Ocean, existing knowledge still de- 
pends very largely on the published results of the 
Fram [44] and Maud [54] expeditions, and to some 
extent from less accessible Russian sources. The best 
general summary remains that of Sverdrup [55]. 
Though published fifteen years ago, Sverdrup’s dis- 
tribution maps, and the data published in the Maud 
results, are the usual sources today of climatic maps 
of the inner Arctic. 
In North America, the most comprehensive accounts 
are those of Ward, Brooks, Connor, and Fitton for 
Alaska [63], Sverdrup for the Canadian Archipelago 
[55], and Connor for the Canadian mainland [8]. All 
these are parts of the Koppen-Geiger Handbuch der 
Klimatologie, published in the middle 1930’s, and are 
now considerably out of date. Since then various sum- 
mary accounts have appeared in official papers, but 
few have been given wide circulation. The Canadian 
Department of Transport published a pamphlet on 
the meteorology of the Canadian Arctic in 1944 [6], 
the scope being actually climatological. The only other 
general work of consequence was a report by Doll [10] 
on the climate of the Labrador coast, as exemplified 
by the records of the Moravian Missions, which have 
maintained climatological diaries for many years. 
Since 1945 the newly accumulated records from this 
region have allowed more intensive studies. Though as 
yet unpublished, detailed works are available on vari- 
ous parts of the Canadian North, many of them in 
thesis form. Among these we may list studies by Mont- 
gomery [42] on coastal Labrador, Hare [19] on the 
eastern Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic, Wonders [68] 
on the Canadian Archipelago, and Currie [9] on the 
Keewatin-Mackenzie district. 
The Greenland region was discussed by Petersen 
(coastal region) [55] and Loewe! (inland ice) [55] in the 
K6ppen-Geiger series. A recent publication of the 
Greenland administration [46] brings the picture up to 
1939, after which little is available. 
Northern Russia and Siberia are adequately covered 
by certain Russian publications. A simple treatment 
is given by Borisov [2], who has been considerably 
1. F. Loewe was an observer with the Wegener Hismitte 
party. 
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