I would like to thank Dr. Loewe for his kind remarks and for drawing attention to the earlier comments of Sorge on this subject.

Dr. Loewe’s suggestion about the effects of melt water at Borg and West Station may well be correct and further field observations are needed to solve this point. The essence of the point concerning heat transport outwards from the centre of the ice sheet, is that this is coupled with the mass transport of ice and is similar to advective heat transfer in meteorology. The various equations are included to show that this effect, due to downward and outward spreading of the ice, may be sufficiently great with large ice sheets to make the normal process of thermal conduction negligible near the surface. In such a case the horizontal temperature gradient could be zero or even negative (decreasing outwards) with the necessary outward transport of heat still taking place.