The world-wide programme of observations to be maintained during 1957–8, covering all the branches of geophysical enquiry, is now broadly agreed. Many nations will participate, either through their existing national observatories, or through others to be temporarily set up. Many of the stations to be occupied lie in remote areas, notably in the polar regions and also in high mountains in countries such as Switzerland and India. Studies of the variation of solar radiation and its relation to the behaviour of the atmosphere at high altitudes have an obvious significance. Glaciological investigations likewise form one of several interrelated branches of geophysics and, apart from the polar regions, will be carried out by a number of nations having access to glaciers in temperate and tropical latitudes.

British participation will involve the setting up of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic stations. In high Antarctic latitudes at the head of the Weddell Sea it is proposed to carry out a programme of accumulation and ablation measurements, together with investigations of past variations in the annual accumulation and of the physical behaviour of the ice, as far as the meteorological programme will allow, the personnel being limited in number. At the same time the Trans-antarctic Expedition under Dr. V. E. Fuchs will be carrying out related observations in the same virtually unknown region of Antarctica.

The many active sub-Antarctic glaciers of South Georgia, lying in a region in which climatic variability is of importance, are likely to be the subject of further investigation, together with those of the Antarctic margin along the coasts of Graham Land. There the existing network of meteorological stations set up by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey provides a useful series of bases for further work.

Elsewhere, the British National Committee is actively considering the establishment of a suitable observational programme on the high equatorial glaciers of East Africa. The period of the “Year” (July 1957 to December 1958) is likely to give rise to numerous contributions to our knowledge of the factors governing the variations of the world’s stock of ice.