The study of marine life from the bottom of Arctic and sub-Arctic seas has long been a topic of scientific interest, and such work represents an important part of contemporary biological research in the polar regions. Contributions to this field have been made through the collective efforts of investigators from many nations over the years and include findings of considerable significance for life science studies as a whole, as well as for specific polar problems. Together with contemporary research on the pelagic and planktonic biota of northern waters, current work on the bottom fauna (benthos) offers much potential for developing our fundamental knowledge of biological processes in the Arctic seas.

The range of the barren-ground caribou in Canada includes approximately 700 000 square miles [1 812 993 sq km]: north from the forests of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the Arctic Ocean and west from Hudson Bay to Alaska. Much of that vast expanse of stunted forests and tundra remained virtually unmapped until the ingress of the aeroplane in the 1930's.

Waste products from man's activities, released into the environment, distribute themselves between the atmosphere, the land, the sea and, through these, to the biota. There is a constant interchange of material between reservoirs leading, it is thought, to an ultimate sinking of trace materials into the depths of the ocean where they slowly accumulate on the ocean bed and are removed from the circulation system. Substances released into the air can rise into the upper atmosphere and spread all over the world before they finally sediment into the lower atmosphere and suffer washout. The overall lifetime of a particular pollutant is determined by its concentration in each reservoir and by its rate of transfer between different pairs of reservoirs. A major goal for scientists is to achieve a quantitative description of this process for the major pollutants so that in the future it may be possible to predict the changing concentrations with time, in each reservoir, of a potentially harmful pollutant of known input rate into the environment.

Due to its length the Guide to current published meteorological data has been split into two parts. The first part of the Guide was published in Polar Record, Vol 17, No 110, 1975, and included data for Alaska, northern Canada and Greenland. This second part contains data for northern Finland. Iceland, northern Norway, northern Sweden, and northern and eastern USSR. For the convenience of the reader the list of symbols has been repeated.