Augustine Courtauld

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Augustine Courtauld (26 August 1904 3 March 1959), often called August Courtauld, was a yachtsman and British Arctic explorer, best known for serving as the solo meteorologist of a winter observation post, Icecap Station, located in the interior of Greenland in 1930-1931. He was the son of British industrialist Samuel Courtauld. During the pioneer powered flights over the Atlantic Ocean in the 1920s, it was already clear that an all-ocean route was suboptimal, especially when flying from east to west. The Great Circle routes from much of Europe to much of North America approach or pass over the island of Greenland, and strong jet stream winds are a further incentive to the westbound flier to take a northern route. During the 1920s, however, little was known of climatic conditions on the coastline of Greenland, and almost literally nothing was known of the weather in the interior of Greenland during the polar winter. The Gino Watkins-led expedition of 1930-1931, the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, was intended to gather data aimed at solving these puzzles.