Repetitive surveillance by polar-orbiting meteorological satellites can monitor the distribution, variability, and behaviour of sea ice in both Arctic and Antarctic regions. This article reviews some of the applications of Nimbus satellite data to the polar regions. For a good review of applications of NOAA (formerly ESSA) satellite data to the polar regions, see Swithinbank (1969, 1970, 1971).

The Center for Polar Archives, a part of the General Services Administration's National Archives and Records Service in Washington, DC, was formally opened on 8 September 1967. The Center serves as a depository for selected records of the Federal Government and for papers that are related to United States activity in the polar regions; it also serves as a research facility for persons interested in United States polar activities.

Readers may wonder why such warlike-sounding ships should intrude into the pages of a journal that is devoted to the study of regions where we must hope that war will always be excluded. It will be seen, however, that many of the vessels that contributed to the exploration of both the Arctic and the Antarctic were drawn from a type of ship denominated “bomb vessel” or merely “bomb” for short (see Table 1). Their “fiery” or “explosive” names still appear on the map, and several of them had distinguished careers. Some account of these interesting ships may provide a useful background to polar studies.

Charles Rowlands, a tea planter and a cousin of mine, decided to finance a sealing expedition from Australia to Kerguelen [Iles Kerguelen], and since he could not go himself he gave me the opportunity of looking after his interests. I went out in the P&O steamer China, all expenses paid. I left England in the middle of 1897 and arrived in Australia in the early spring. I was paid £100, with all expenses. I shared the officers' cabin and was not to be allowed to do crew duties. I was 22 years old at the time.

Summary:In a recent study (Weeks and Campbell, in press), we made a rather complete examination of the idea that icebergs could advantageously be used as a source of fresh water. The origin of the general idea of transporting icebergs is obscure; it may date from the 1850's when ice was transported from Alaska to California as a commercial venture. The current revival of the idea, in particular as applied to the water problems of southern California, can be credited to John Issacs of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (Burt, 1956). However no critical evaluation was ever published. We initially undertook the present study because our intuition “told” us that the idea was untenable and we thought that we could easily prove that this was the case, thereby laying the idea to rest. Our intuition proved to be wrong and we now believe that the idea is, indeed, highly attractive when applied to certain locations in the Southern Hemisphere. This note briefly outlines our approach to analyzing the problem and our results

Eskimo-speaking peoples inhabit Arctic lands that extend some 6 400 km longitudinallyfrom Chukotka to Greenland. This enormous territory comes under the administration of four nations: Canada, Denmark, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and United States of America. As citizens of these nations, Eskimos are becoming more and more enmeshed in the cultures and economies of their respective industrial societies, with the result that, as in other underdeveloped regions of the world, their numbers have increased markedly in therecent past

Most of the highly populated regions of the world are in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The shortest routes between some of them (and they happen to be the most advanced technologically) lie across the Arctic regions. The possibility of using these routes on a commercial scale has become real only comparatively recently, as technology has found ways of dealing with the distances and the natural obstacles. The transport systems with significant international applications are by sea and air. Land transport, whether by road or rail, crosses few frontiers (north of the Arctic Circle, only into and within Scandinavia) and raises no problems of special interest.

There has been no time since the end of the Second World War when it could not have been said that the Canadian Eskimos were at a critical point in their history. The north has become a part of the world as a whole, and the Eskimos, caught in the course of world events, have become subject to changes that affect every aspect of their lives. This is inevitable, and all concerned recognize it as an inescapable fact. Some writers have simplified the current situation among the Canadian Eskimos as a struggle between the old and the new. They have pointed to the privation that was so often an unavoidable accompaniment to primitive life and have argued that there can be no return to such conditions. This approach does not lead anywhere, for nobody has seriously suggested a return to the primitive. It is true that the Eskimos may not be any happier now than they were in former times; in outward appearance they seem in fact to be markedly less happy. A return to the old days might therefore be appealing, but nobody, and least of all the Eskimos themselves, considers it to be either possible or desirable. To suggest the contrary is to set up snowmen only in order to knock them down.

At the present time, only Antarctica and Greenland carry ice sheets comparable with the ice sheets that covered vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere as recently as 20 000 years ago. At the time of maximum glaciation, some 300 000 years ago, the volume of ice on earth was three times what it is today, and it covered the northern parts of continents all around the Arctic Ocean. In North America, ice stretched south as far as Kansas; in Europe, it extended down ot the River Thames and the Sudety mountains and covered much of Siberia. Even now, the Antarctic ice sheet covers an area of 12 million km2 and in places reaches depths of more than 4 km. The smaller Greenland ice sheet has an area of 1.8 million km2 and exceeds 3 km in depth.

The following report is based on work done in conjunction with the Canadian “Operation Hazen-Tanquary” at Hazen Camp (81° 49'N, 71° 18'W), Ellesmere Island, NWT, in the summers of 1966, 1967, and 1968. Hazen Camp offers an excellent high Arctic site because of the extensive facilities available and because the botany and entomology are comparatively well known and some insect-flower relationships there have already been considered. Furthermore, the Lake Hazen trough, sheltered by mountain ranges to the north, enjoys less cloudy and more benign summers than most high Arctic localities. These factors contribute to the support of a biota that is relatively rich for the high Arctic, even though the ecosystem is considerably simpler than in the low Arctic. There are only about 75 species of Dicotyledoneae and about 250 species of Arthropoda to consider, which makes it possible for one man to investigate such a broad ecological problem as insect-flower relations.

During this short period began what may be termed the re-exploration of northern Canada, a scientific examination of lands that had been roughly charted by expeditions of the previous hundred years, but that were otherwise little known except to fur traders, a few missionaries, and the occasional traveller. Only now did the newly confederated Dominion of Canada begin to take a practical interest in its vast northern expansions. The government sent three scientific expeditions to Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay, and the Geological Survey of Canada began to direct its attention towards the north. One of its officers, A. P. Low, explored the length and breadth of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula virtually single-handed and, as if anticipating the Klondike gold rush, towards which the work of many prospectors in Yukon Territory was steadily leading, Dawson, McConnell and Ogilvie published detailed accounts of routes and conditions in the Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory, information that proved invaluable to both government and individuals when the rush was on.

The Franklin Search continues through this instalment of our list, the main search culminating in the discovery by M'Clintock's expedition of the record that told of the Franklin expedition's success in finding a North-west Passage, of Franklin's death, and of the abandonment of his ships. Later, C. F. Hall and Frederick Schwatka discovered more bones and relics, which, however, added little to the bare outline of that tragic drama.

On 10 May 1971, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found Mario Escamilla not guilty of second-degree murder on the high seas in the death of another American, Bennie Lightsy. The same jury convicted Escamilla of a lesser offence, involuntary manslaughter on the high seas, and he was sentenced to three years in the custody of the United States Attorney-General, a provision that permits probation after as little as 60 days. In fact, Escamilla has been free on bail pending the hearing of an appeal, brief for which will have been filed by 17 October 1971 to be argued before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in late 1971 or early 1972.

The Birnirk culture is important in Inupiak Eskimo prehistory because the Thule and Western Thule cultures and all recent prehistoric Eskimo cultures derive from it. Its appearance on the American side of Bering Strait has puzzled archaeologists because it is linked to the cultures of the Asian side of the strait and is not lineally related to the cultures, Norton and Ipiutak, that it replaced in Alaska. Recent excavations at Cape Nome, Alaska, have shed light on the nature of this replacement. I carried out these excavations during 1969–71 under the auspices of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and under the supervision of Professor Froelich Rainey. The University Museum and the Explorers Club gave financial assistance.

A third field season in the joint research programme of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) and the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) was carried out between November 1971 and January 1972. For accounts of previous work in this programme, see Polar Record (1968); Evans and Smith, (1970); and Robin and others (1970). The personnel from SPRI working in the field during the past season were S. Evans, C. H. Harrison, D. J. Drewry, G. K. A. Oswald, M. R. Gorman, and (from the University of Gent and Expéditions Antarctiques Belges) H. Decleir. A. Clayton and J. Whittington of the SPRI staff assisted in data reduction.

Ice navigation in Arctic regions is mainly carried out in four areas:

1. The Baltic Sea, which is the only ice-bound sea where year-round traffic is maintained. Except for the Gulf of Bothnia, all main harbours are kept permanently open, even in hard winters; during mild winters, which on average occur once in five years, year-round traffic is maintained even there. This task is accomplished by using some 20 full-size (above 7 000 SHP) icebreakers (two from Denmark, one from West Germany, six to eight from USSR, seven from Finland, four from Sweden), as well as several hundred ice-strengthened cargo ships.

The “Canadian north” in the terms of communications means those parts of Canada not enjoying telephone, radio, and television services presently available in the populated-southern belt. Generally this is the area above lat 55 °N in the west and above 52°N in the provinces east of Ontario.