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WEATHER OVER THE..MARSHALL ISLANDS
1, Wes’? .and Dry’? Seasons:
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Our knowledge, of weather -ond wind in the Central Pocific is still surprisingly
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meager, . The region :lies far from the chief trade routes of the Pacific, so that.”
we do not possess the abundance of marine records, dating back to the days of
the full-rigged ship, that give us so much information on susface conditions in
higher oceanic latitudes and along the coasts of Asia and America.
In spite of
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long occupation, first by Germany, then Japan, .and in spite of the location of
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recent weapon fests by the United St
ed Forces, the Marshall Islands -cre
among the least known, from a meteorological point of view, of the archipelagos
The reason ligs portly .In the short observational record,
of the Central . Pacific.
but -more importantly, perhaps, in certain preconceived ideas, held alike by many
professional meteorologists and by. operational commanders acting on their advice,
thaf have fended to obscure the issues.
Historically, explorers, soldiers, sailors, and scientists of the Atlantic community first learned about tropical weather in, and in the neighborhood of,
the -
great continents: Asia, America, and Africa. With few exceptions the torrid parts
of these regions are subject fo pronounced seasonal variation in wind and weather.
In some regions the seasons are spoken of as ‘monsoons, in others, as the wet
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year, has been known to laymen for centuries.
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The peoples of high latitudes in
Europe and America have found nothing surprising in this: living also on continents,
“ they have been used fo far greater seasonal extremes, particularly in temperature,
‘than any found in monsoon countries.
So there has grown up, in the minds of
,
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Aft all events, the tendency of rainfall in these places, to be
associated with a specific wind direction and to occur mostly in one secson of the
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and dry seasons.
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from any large land mass, display well-marked seasonal variations in wind and
In the Central Pacific, especially east of the 180th meridian, it is very dif.
ficult to find, in the data that we have so far, very reliable traces of this supposed
‘universal seasonal variation.
-but this
seems
Islands is a zone with
* globe.
The
There is oc great variability in weather, if is true,
to occur with little relation to the time of the year.
’ the region overlapping
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. weather.
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both scientists and laymen, .the expectation thot oll tropical regions, even those far
the
equator and about the longitudes of the Hawaiian
probably the
Marshall Islands,
“Central Pacific
and consequently
lying
most highly
variable rainfall on the whole
as they do
closer to Australia than the ™
atolls, come remotely under the influence of that continent
show some seasonal -variafion in ‘cloud and rainfall
this is overshadowed by o greater’ aperiodic
Central Pacific..
In fact,
But
varicbility of the type found in the
In the southern Marshalls this aperiodic type of variation extends
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