_Climate._--The climate is very uncertain, the weather changing suddenly from bright sunshine (when mosquitoes often swarm) to dense fog or heavy falls of snow and icy winds. At Julianehaab in the extreme south-west the winter is not much colder than that of Norway and Sweden in the same locality; but its mean temperature for the whole year probably approximates to that on the Norwegian coast 600 m. farther north. The climate of the interior has been found to be of a continental character, with large ranges of temperature, and with an almost permanent anti-cyclonic region over the interior of the inland ice, from which the prevailing winds radiate towards the coasts. On the 64th parallel the mean annual temperature at an elevation of 6560 ft. is supposed to be -13 deg. F., or reduced to sea-level 5 deg. F. The mean annual temperature in the interior farther north is supposed to be -10 deg. F. reduced to sea-level. The mean temperature of the warmest month, July, in the interior should be, reduced to sea-level, on the 64th parallel 32 deg. F., and that of the coldest month, January, about -22 deg. F., while in North Greenland it is probably -40 deg. reduced to sea-level. Here we may probably find the lowest temperatures of the northern hemisphere. The interior of Greenland contains both summer and winter a pole of cold, situated in the opposite longitude to that of Siberia, with which it is well able to compete in extreme severity. On Nansen's expedition temperatures of about -49 deg. F. were experienced during the nights in the beginning of September, and the minimum during the winter may probably sink to -90 deg. F. in the interior of the inland ice. These low temperatures are evidently caused by the radiation of heat from the snow-surface in the rarefied air in the interior. The daily range of temperature is therefore very considerable, sometimes amounting to 40 deg. Such a range is elsewhere found only in deserts, but the surface of the inland ice may be considered to be an elevated desert of snow.[34] The climate of the east coast is on the whole considerably more arctic than that of the west coast on corresponding latitudes; the land is much more completely snow-covered, and the snow-line goes considerably lower. The probability also is that there is more precipitation, and that the mean temperatures are lower.[35] The well-known strangely warm and dry _fohn_-winds of Greenland occur both on the west and the east coast; they are more local than was formerly believed, and are formed by cyclonic winds passing either over mountains or down the outer slope of the inland ice.[36] Mirage and similar phenomena and the aurora are common.