SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 



181 



11 limber of icebergs sighted eacli year in the western North Athmtic, 

 1S80-1897. AVhen the yearly number of icebei'gs in the various tab- 

 ulations were compared with mete()rok)gical conditions, it proved 

 that (hiring the years of record, a summer cliaracterized by a greater 

 than normal auKnint of offshore winds over the ice fjords, had been 

 succeeded the following s})ring by more icebergs than usual off New- 

 foundland. The atmospheric pressure distribution suggested there- 

 by as favorable for a great crop of icebergs is any one or two or more 

 of the following conditions: A strong Baffin Bay low: a somewhat 

 strengthened east Greenland high: a suppression of the Icelandic 

 low; the west Iceland low, only an appendage of the Baffin Bay low; 

 the east Iceland low is replaced by a high. 



Mecking concludes that while tlie control of the ocean currents 

 is fundamental for the berg drift out of the Arctic, the strength and 

 intensity of the winds from year to year is the chief agency that 

 causes the variation in the number of icebergs drifting into the 

 western North Atlantic. He divides the important Avinds into two 

 classes (a) the summer winds over the glacier fronts; and (h) 

 the winter winds over Davis Strait. Mecking places most emphasis 

 on the direction and force of the summer winds over the ice fjords 

 of west Greenland between Jacobshavn and Upernivik. A summer 

 characterized by an abnormal amount of east winds, according to his 

 opinion, will blow more than an ordinary number of bergs out into 

 Davis Strait, and this event is of proportions sufficient to cause a 

 heavy iceberg crop off Newfoundland the following spring. With so 

 few data from this little-known region for the period investigated 

 Mecking's conclusions can only be regarded as tentative. 



I have therefore continued with the iceberg figures where Mecking 

 left off. bringing the records up to 19H0. a total series of 50 years. 

 (For iceberg anomaly talde see Smith. 1927. p. 76.) 



Numbc?- of iceberc/s south of Neirfoundland (fortji-cighfh iKiralUJ ) in tvestern 



North At] antic 



