Abstract
No doubt the gravitational outflow of air from the ice-dome of Greenland is the source of a good deal of cold air to the cyclones of the North Atlantic, as upheld by Prof. Hobbs in his paper to the Geography Section of the British Association at Southampton, and printed in NATURE for October 3. But why, many meteorologists will ask, should he go to the extreme length, implied in the article, of disregarding other sources of cold air for the Bjerknesian mechanism of cyclonic circulation? Can Prof. Hobbs seriously intend that the sloping ice plateau of Greenland, so very limited by comparison in area, can supply all, or nearly all, the cold air for the cyclonic activity of the entire northern hemisphere, Pacific, as well as Atlantic, centre? The idea seems incompatible with the scale of operations, and the facts quoted by Prof. Hobbs himself, if rightly interpreted, show that it really is incompatible. Of course, if Greenland were denuded down to sea-level one spring in the mechanism would be removed, and doubtless important modifications would be imposed upon the characteristic circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean; for in the last resort the details of the atmospheric circulation and the perpetual transpositions of the Polar Front are dominated by geographical configuration, or in other words by continentality and oceanity relationships. But the facts do not warrant the contention that Greenland, in a sense an accidental feature in the circumpolar configuration, is the mainspring of the circulation in the northern hemisphere.
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BONACINA, L. Greenland or Polar Front?. Nature 116, 748 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116748a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116748a0
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