MENACE TO SHIPPING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27510, 3 October 1950, Page 5

MENACE TO SHIPPING

Icebergs In North Atlantic NO INDICATIONS OF DISAPPEARANCE Rec. 8 p.m. NEW YORK, Oct. 1. The French scientist, M. Gerald Taylor, who has arrived at New York from Greenland, said today that there would always be icebergs to menace North Atlantic shipping. M. Taylor spent 18 months on the Greenland icecap, about 1000 miles from the .North Pole, as a member of a French Gov-ernment-sponsored expedition. He said the temperature dropped to as low as 78 degrees under freezing point and was never above freezing point. The expedition discovered that ice on Greenland was about 9000 feet thick and that ice was pushed out into the sea at an average rate of 60 feet daily. Icebergs, which floated through the North Atlantic Ocean, had broken from that ice. There was no indication that icebergs would becomt smaller or fewer, M. Taylor said. M. Taylor added that the expedition had constructed a weather station on a 9900-foot ice plateau. Greenland’s icecap was important because it had been determined that weather conditions there had a bearing on the weather over the North Atlantic air and shipping lines. The establishment of a weather base would enabla meteorologists to make more accurate and quicker forecasts which would add to the safety of aeroplane journeys across the Atlantic. M. Taylor said he estimated that the Greenland icecap was one of the highest “ice mountains” in the world, but not as large in size as the ice areas in the South Polar regions.