40 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. JO 



culation. If the northeast trade blows more strongly than usual 

 it would tend to displace the maximum towards the right. Thereby 

 the atmospheric cyclone over the North Atlantic Ocean would be 

 intensified with attendant intensifications of the air pressure mini- 

 mum of its center near Iceland. Intensified high pressure near 

 the Azores and the dependent intensification of the air pressure 

 minimum near Iceland can therefore be connected as cause and 

 efifect." 



Prof. Gossmann has studied '' The Relation Between the Tempera- 

 tures of the North Atlantic Ocean and of the Northwest and Mid- 

 dle Europe " (1908), and particularly in how far this relation may 

 be used for temperature forecasting. He cites liberally from earlier 

 investigations of the same matter. He seems to have assumed er- 

 roneously that variations in the surface temperature of the water 

 along the Norwegian coast are directly connected with the varia- 

 tions in the Gulf Stream. In an investigation covering a long 

 series of years, he comes to the conclusion that a temperature fore- 

 cast for north Europe based upon the temperature of the sea on 

 the Norwegian coast will in general be less trustworthy than a fore- 

 cast which is based on the local temperature conditions of the dif- 

 ferent places. Such a forecast may be based on the previously noted 

 tendency to a continuation in the same sense of the temperature 

 deviations and the changes of temperatures from month to month 

 and partially also from quarter to quarter, which would furnish 

 certain conditions for temperature forecast. As he appears to have 

 incorrectly assumed that the variations in the surface temperature of 

 the water along the Norwegian coast coincide with variations in 

 the Gulf Stream, he comes to the conclusion " that the variations 

 of the temperatures of the Gulf Stream cannot be directly the 

 cause of the phenomenon (that is to say, of the conservational 

 tendency of the temperature deviations, etc.). We must associate 

 it rather with a conservational tendency of the air pressure 

 distribution." 



Grossmann thinks that before one may accept as a sufficient ex- 

 planation the reciprocal action between the ocean temperature and 

 the air pressure distribution to which Meinardus called attention, 

 it must at least be shown " that the observed differences of ocean 

 temperature are sufficient in their influence to produce the 

 differences in the air pressure distribution which are revealed 

 in the mean values of the air pressure differences as well as in the 

 charts of air pressure distribution for different periods." Gross- 



