The observations were as follows: During the last two hours of the flight slight high clouds had begun to appear, but not so dense that they could prevent the taking of solar observations immediately after landing. The next day the clear weather was gone and solid gray cloud layers covered the whole sky. It was the polar summer weather which had started, just as we calculated it would from the “Fram” expedition’s observations. And it did not improve during the following days; the 23rd, 24th and 25th were all gray-weather days, certainly without rainfall, but also without sunshine. A northerly breeze was blowing on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th, but it got calmer on the 25th.
The big high-pressure region which we had over the Arctic Sea on the starting day continued, and the polar flyers must have been very near the high pressure center as they now had calm weather. As far as could be seen everything looked favorable, and whilst we were lying and waiting at Danskeöen in radiant sunshine, the whole day long, I personally thought that this good weather would certainly stretch right up to the Pole. But here the expedition’s observations have taught us something else, that in the best of weather conditions there is gray weather at the Pole when the year is so far advanced as the end of May. This is also one of the new meteorological results which this expedition has brought to light—in regard to the “Fram’s” expedition it happened that they did not meet any high pressure regions at the end of May.
There were a few occasions when the clouds broke up at 87° 42′; for instance, the 29th of May “dawned with sunshine from an almost quite clear sky.” But this was only a sign that worse weather was approaching. In the night, between the 28th and 29th, snow had passed Spitzbergen on the way north. It reached the polar flyers on the 30th in their camp 87° 43′. The clearing on the 29th was therefore just a passing phenomenon, and if the aeroplanes had started that day southwards they would after a few hours’ flight have got right into a heavy snowfall. These clearings, before the large wandering snow-masses, are well known in lower latitudes. It is, however, interesting for meteorologists to find that the same rules also apply to the weather conditions at the Pole.
Now follows a period of prevailing southerly and southeasterly winds which cause the temperature to rise quickly. On the coldest day, the 24th of May, there had been -12.5° c., but at the end of the month we already had +7° c. and on the 7th of June the temperature was up to 0°. This enormously quick change from winter to “summer temperature” is typical of the polar conditions.
“Spring” does not last “month’s,” as in the lower latitudes—it is finished in a few weeks’ time.
From the 7th of June onwards the temperature did not rise much; it remained about 0°. Sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under. One can say that 0° is the characteristic summer temperature of the Arctic region. Warmer air than 0° is very often carried there from lower latitudes, but this gets cooled down immediately through contact with the ice, and gets a temperature of about 0°. As mentioned before, it is this cooling down which is responsible for the fog because it causes the air’s moisture to condense. The first fog, which extended right down to the ground, was observed on the 2nd of June; the next was on the 8th of June, and thereafter happened fairly often, so in the end whole days free of fog were exceptions.
Luckily on the 15th of June, when the starting place was ready, there was sufficient visibility for them to start and to find their way out of their “Foggy” home.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.