Recenzje, przeglądy literatury i bibliografia: Atlas Antarktiki

This review examines the first volume of the Atlas of Antarctica, published in the Soviet Union in 1966 to mark the tenth anniversary of Soviet Antarctic expeditions. Drawing on Russian, Soviet, and international observations collected from the discovery of Antarctica through 1963, the work is presented as the first comprehensive atlas devoted to the region. Produced collaboratively by numerous Soviet research institutions, it contains 543 maps together with extensive diagrams, tables, aerial photographs, documentary reproductions, and a geographical index of 4,668 names. Although the Antarctic Convergence generally defines its spatial scope, several maps extend to the Subtropical Convergence or even 10° south latitude. The atlas synthesizes the history of exploration and cartography and organizes contemporary knowledge across aeronomy and geophysics, geology and relief, climatology, glaciology, oceanology, biology, and physical-geographical regionalization. The review concentrates on its climatological, glaciological, and oceanographic sections. It highlights the pioneering climatic regionalization of Antarctica, the representation of ice-sheet thickness, accumulation, snow and firn properties, and the mapping of relationships between atmospheric circulation and ocean dynamics. A specific methodological reservation concerns the use of January and July rather than December and June for solar-radiation maps, given the direct astronomical control of insolation in polar regions. The reviewer also notes that scarce, short, and asynchronous observations sometimes prevented reliance on long-term datasets, an understandable limitation of the relatively recent emergence of coordinated Antarctic research. Overall, the atlas is judged a major interdisciplinary synthesis with lasting importance for cartography, geography, polar science, and the history of Antarctic knowledge.