WORLD WEATHER.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20260, 31 July 1937, Page 13

WORLD WEATHER.

SOVIET POLAR CAMP. ITS VALUE RECOGNISED. (Times Air Mail Service.) LONDON. June 30. Professor Sohmidt, leader of the Soviet expedition which has established a permanent camp on an icefloe near the North Pole, talked to me for more than an hour to-day on the results and prospeots of his Polar station (says the Moscow correspondent of the Dally Telegraph). With great modesty lie attributed Russia’s outstanding triumph to the fact that they had all the resources of the Soviet State behind them, whereas the great Arctic figures of the past, such as Nansen, Amundsen and Peary, depended on private enterprise. In 'the first month's work Papanin’s Polar ice camp had, he said, oleared up the problem of the connection between the weather of Northern Russia and Northern America. He hoped, after a series of other ioe floe camps had been established, to solve the world’s weather problem. The North Pole summer climate was a good deal milder than was expeoted, he went on, and often showed temparatures above freezing point. Depth of Polar Bea. The Polar ollmate was by no means stable, but was affected by much the same cyclones of depression as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. Seoondly, he said, they had sounded the Polar sea and found that It was ,more than 3000 feet deeper than Nansen’s researches had led them to expeot. Thirdly, with the aid of astronomical Instruments they had mapped out an unknown long stretch over which they had drifted. They hoped, after drifting for a whole year on their ioe-floe, to discover the secret of the currents flowing between the Pole and the Atlantio. He refused to be drawn regarding the practical commercial possibilities of Chkaloff's non-stop trans-Polar flight from Moscow to Portland, Washington State. The establishment of air bases on Arctio ice-floes was feasible, but before anything could be done to establish trans-Polar communications Canada and Alaska must first undertake the gigantic task, which Russia had already accomplished, of creating a vast net of wireless and weather stations inside the Arctic Circle.