Polar Climate and Vegetation

Abstract

DR. STEFANSSON's proposition, as put forth in his letter to NATURE of August 4, p. 162, that if either pole of the earth were situated in a lowland area the winter snowfall would be insufficient to produce a permanent ice-cap, is fundamentally based upon the fact that the Arctic lowlands of Canada and Siberia, with a mean annual temperature far below the freezing-point, are yet free from a summer snow-cover and permanent glaciation. This proposition is tantamount to saying that the inner north polar area is permanently glaciated because it happens to be sea, and the south polar area because it happens to be a plateau 10,000 feet high.