FORECASTING

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1937, Page 7

FORECASTING

OF THE WEATHER STATIONS IN ANTARCTIC LONDON, July 5. For 15 years Sir Hubert Wilkins has been urging the establishment of Antarctic weather stations as a-» aid to long-range weather forecasting in the Southern Hemisphere. Now aL last the idea has received official blessing, although details are 3iot yet settled.

In an interview, Sir Hubert Wilkins, referring to the report of the Polar Committee of the Imperial Conference on the establishment of meteorological stations, said that five stations would be needed.

South America needed one at Charcot Island, or possibly better still at Coatsland, and South Africa needed one in Enderby Land. Sir Hubert hoped that the Commonwealth might establish one at Gaussland or Kaiser Wilhelm Land, and that New Zealand would have one at Ross Island, in Ross Sea, where they had the advantage that records over a number of years were available from the work of expeditions. A fifth station should be established somewhere on the Pacific side of the Antarctic, but it was difficult to find a site.

Possibly Australia might use R'lleny Island as a site, especially if, as the report suggested, two stations were established. It had been suggested that a station might be established also at Kerguelen Land or some other sub-Antarctic island. Tb,e Director of the Australian Meteorological Office, Sir George Simpson, had held that it was most desirable that the stations be actually in the Antarctic or on the edge of the continent.

Sir Hubert pointed out that, because of the westerly winds, a station at Enderby Land might interest the Commonwealth as much as it concerned South Africa.

If South America would build one station and each of the Rritish Dominions in the Southern Hemisphere one, they should, as Sir George Simpson had suggested, greatly heln weather forecasts in the Southern Hemisphere and possibly throughout the world.