WHERE IT IS COLD.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 23, 22 March 1918, Page 2

WHERE IT IS COLD.

On the hottest day in summer a flying man may be in the Arctic regions in ten minutes by mounting to a height of 10,000 ft., just as the climber may pass through all the shades of temperature by climbing KilimaNiaro, that giant peak which rises above the snow-line from the Equator. He commences with the tropical jungle and ends amid eternal snow. The fact is that the temperature is invariably low at 10,000 ft. and over, whether at the tropics or the poles, and it is quite likely to be the lowest at the Equator. Airmen well know the intense cold of those upper regions, and they need -the rig-out of a Shackleton if they would mount to 20,000 ft. above the earth’s surface. In fact, there is little variation of temperature in these upper reaches of the atmosphere. It is much the some in summer as winter, except for the difference which a high wind makes. Even in the depth of a hot summer the airman will encounter 40 degrees of frost at 10,000 ft., and at twice that altitude a hundred degrees of frost—the temperature of the South Pols—is not unusual,