The founding of the Journal of Glaciology may well be said to mark a new epoch in the history of glacial Science. That it is destined to play an important, indeed, vital rôle in the future advancement of that science there can be not the slightest doubt. The new journal, moreover, makes its appearance at a time when glaciology in all its diverse phases is becoming increasingly useful in the affairs of mankind. The civilized world, having resumed its peaceful pursuits, is turning its attention to the polar and circumpolar regions—not with the thought, as heretofore, of launching an occasional daring expedition, but with the intention of making practical and continuing use of them. The Arctic, assuredly, will soon be one of the cross-roads of aerial travel. Already meteorological stations are being established at far northern points as a vanguard. And the Antarctic, though less accessible and more forbidding, is being invaded from several sides at once. Never before, it follows, has there been more insistent demand for factual information on the physical conditions that prevail in those formerly shunned areas, north and south, or on the practical problems that must be met there, on the land, on the sea and in the air. Never before has man found himself more dependent upon the specialized knowledge of the glaciologist than he is to-day in his ambitious endeavour to push the frontiers of civilization out towards the Poles.
But glaciologists are equally needed in other parts of the earth—wherever mountains bear snow and ice. Until they have mastered the mechanics of glacier motion and the entire attendant complex of physical phenomena, the often contradictory evidences of erosion and deposition by glaciers of different types will remain enigmatic to the geomorphologist. On the practical side, more needs to be done to safeguard lives and property from the recurrent menace of avalanches and of ice debacles in rivers. And the snow surveys, which in some regions have proved so useful in the forecasting of water supplies for irrigation in arid lowlands and for industrial and municipal uses, deserve to be introduced in many other countries.
The utilization of run-off from glaciers in the European Alps led, half a century ago, to the systematic repetitive measuring of the variations in size of glaciers as the result of changing climatic trends. The practice has spread to other continents, but it needs to be integrated into a world-wide system. Such measurements, if carried out in concert by many nations in both hemispheres, will in time yield results that, correlated with meteorological records, will throw invaluable light upon the climatic controls under which glaciers grow and again decline. Concrete data of this kind will dispose of much theorizing and ultimately will make comprehensible the physical conditions that repeatedly in past geologic periods have caused ice sheets to spread over large parts of the earth and that permit two such ice sheets to persist at the present time. This long-time programme clearly will serve not glaciology alone but all those branches of science that are concerned, directly or indirectly, with the presence and the effects of snow and ice upon the earth to-day and in past times.
It follows from all this that the British Glaciological Society, which had the wisdom and enterprise to launch the new Journal of Glaciology, thereby has provided an effective organ for mutual information and interchange of thought to scientists working in a number of interrelated and interdependent fields of research—glaciology, meteorology, climatology, physical geography, geology, pedology, hydrology, oceanography, archaeology, ecology and palaeontology. That being true, there is every reason to believe that the Journal of Glaciology is starting upon a highly useful and successful career.
