The Circulation of Air in the Southern Hemisphere.

Abstract

IN this investigation of the circulation of the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere, the author has taken a new course. Instead of proceeding in the usual way from tables of wind-direction and force, he has taken as the groundwork of his researches the atmospheric whirls themselves. He does not deal with cyclonic systems, as one might at first suppose, but with the anticyclonic, the travelling highpressure systems. The reason of this is plainly due to his previous work, “A Discussion of Australian Meteorology ”(London, 1909). After a four-year period in the variations of air-pressure over India, South Africa, and South America, and their relations to the four-year cycle in the solar variations had been successfully “demonstrated, it was necessary to investigate the weather conditions in Australia with that object. In the subtropical continents of the southern hemisphere Weather conditions are chiefly influenced by barometric maxima almost constantly travelling from west to east. This was first shown to be so for Australia by the astronomer H. C. Russell, of Sydney, to whom the meteorology of that continent is so much indebted.