Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Some recent observations together with data from earlier expeditions (Court 1942, Schumacher 1955 and others) suggest that the annual variation of temperature in the stratosphere over the Antarctic is characteristically asymmetric with a steep rise of temperature in the spring. This is probably not general over the Arctic. The tropopause over the Antarctic is significantly higher than over the Arctic in their respective winters and the variability of temperature in the lower stratosphere appears to be considerably less in the same season over the Antarctic than over the Arctic.</jats:p>