The Cause of Anticyclones

Abstract

THE steady and persistently high barometric pressure that has prevailed over southern England during most of the autumn naturally causes the desire to know how an anticyclone is produced and maintained in such a situation, but the explanations current in meteorological literature are not for the most part efficacious. It is commonly stated that the high pressure is due to a mass of cold and therefore heavy air above it, but for Europe at least this is in direct opposition to observational results, which show that some three-quarters of the whole mass of air over an anticyclonic area is unduly warm. It is the mass of air over the area that is important; its temperature is quite immaterial, and the real difficulty is to explain why the excess of air does not roll off.