CHAPTER II 



DYNAMIC GEOLOGY 



PART I. METEOROLOGICAL NOTES, WITH SPECIAL 



REFERENCE TO TEMPERATURE, SNOWFALL, 



AND ABLATION 



Temperahire. The close coincidence of the Temperature Pole with the Geographic 

 Pole in Antarctica obviously constitutes ideal conditions for an immense permanent 

 anticyclone if the land had been of low altitude, but, as Dr. W. N. Shaw has 

 recently pointed out to us, the problem is much complicated by the rock and 

 ice dome of the Antarctic taking the place of so much of what otherwise would 

 have been the lower part of this anticyclone. The steep grade in temperature 

 between land and water, often as much as 30° or 40° Fahr. within a mile back from 

 the coast, combhied with the vast amount of open sea in which the continent is 

 placed, and the comparatively steep downgrade from the centre of the land to the 

 coast, contribute to make the Antarctic the home of winds of a violence and 

 persistence without precedent in any other part of the world. A continent of the 

 shape, relief, and situation of Antarctica must always dominate local weather 

 conditions. For example, it can scarcely be possible for weather conditions on the 

 coast of one side of such a continent to travel across its altitude of upwards of 10,000 

 feet and descend on the other side. Such a movement would probably be possible 

 only where the continent is very narrow, as at the "stalk of the pear" in the 

 American sector of Antarctica. Since the discovery by Amundsen of the remarkably 

 low temperature area south of the Bay of Whales, on the Ross Barrier, where the 

 mean temperature in August 1911 was — 44'5°C. ( — 48"1° F.), the suggestion by 

 him that there may be at least two temperature poles (Cold-Poles) in Antarctica 

 seems very plausible. In the Northern Hemisphere there are two such poles, one 

 almost identical with the North Pole, the other near Verkhoyansk in Siberia. 

 Amundsen's Cold-Pole on the Ross Barrier is obviously to be correlated with the 

 calm state of the atmosphere in that region, a fact in turn dependent on the absence 

 of high mountain ranges in the eastern region adjacent to Ross Sea. The Antarctic 

 Horst, 10,000 to 15,000 feet high, is a powerful disturbing factor on the west side of 

 Ross Sea. The high winds generated largely by it lead to a rapid interchange of air 



between the South Pole and warmer latitudes, and so tend to raise temperatures. 



11 



