The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-23

The great success Of science In predicting
the daily phenomena Of weather has revived
the long cherished hope Of foreseeing the eli
matte character of the seasons. Who can say
what the immense value Of such information
beforehand would have been in this peculiarly
stormy and severe winter2 1t has long been
the belief Of both peasants and philosophers
that the variations Of temperature are not as
irregular as they are vulgarly supposed to be,
and in very recent times many eminent as
tronomers have pointed out the remarkable
coincidence between the earth's seasonal cy-
cles and the sunspot cycles. A Canadian
writer, using the returns of the Toronto OBJ
servatory, has also recently indicated for that
location connection between the amount Of
annual rainfall and the sunspots, and Of these
again with several interlacing streams Of
circumsolar meteors." The Radcliffe astron-
omer in England, in his report for 1871, an
nounces that the mean direction Of the wind
at Oxford, computed by the records OF self
registering Instruments, varies between the
maximum and minimum Of sunspots, the ten
dency of the wind to westward increasing
with the number Of sunspots, and, with such
west wind, the amount of rain. The Astron-
omer Royal, Professor G. Piazzl Smith. has
very lately made an important addition to our
knowledge of this subject of cosmical meteorol-
ogy, and ventures some striking and well con-
firmed suggestions. Basing his deductions upon
the results obtained from the rock thermome
ters of the Royal Observatory at Edinburg,
he states that the most positive and striking
feature of the whole series of observations is
''the great heat wave which occurs every
eleven years and fraction, and nearly coin
cidently with the beginning of the increase of
each sunspot cycle of the same duration"
The sunspot cyles have been well determined
by several authorities, working Independently,
and the views of Piazzi Smith, therefore, are
neither conjectural nor theoretical, but en-
titled to earnest study and research. He
reads off from his magnificent thermom etric
records, as the next largest feature, an
extreme cold close on either side Of the
great heat wave," to which he gives the dis
tinction of the ''cold wave." and, writing
some time before the pr esent winter had
that, depending on our later observed eleven
year periods, or from 1916 to 1857, and from
the latter up to 1868, we may perhaps be
justified in concluding that the minimum tenn
perature of the present cold wa We was reached
in 1871, and that the next sim liar cold wave
will occur in 1873" This prediction has, 1t
would seem, been in the ma in points substan-
TALLY verified; and it Is sustained by the
roughly-estimated ''len-year eriod" familiar
to the old Western pioneers, whose fortunes
and interests have made them such close OBJ
servers and really such excellent philosophers.
The oceanic masses on our globe are, of
course, the most potential regulators of eli
mate, because their surface is three
times as large as that of the combined
land masses, and because in their deep
waters-1eir Gulf Streams and Kuro
Siwos-are the great reservoirs Of solar
heat and energy. 1t Is easy to see that the
mensual or annual variations of heat from
cosmical regions would be first made sensible
in the torrid zone of the sea, and thence be
felt in the higher latitudes, and on the wind
ward sides of the great continents like North
America. The windward side of our CONT
nent is its western or Pacific side, and this
fact may account for the remarkably severe
snow storms of the Rocky Mountains this win
ter, which have made their passes impossible
even to the iron horse, and blockaded the only
transcontinental railway we now have. It is
now, however, known that the narrow and
shallow channel of Behring Straits, which is
the gateway of the Kuro Siwo or hot japan
Gulf Stream, into the Arctic Ocean, becomes
gorged with icebergs and frozen solidly across,
and to the bottom, in midwinter and March.
We are forced, therefore, to the conclusion
that the great equatorial stream, denied adj
mittance there, must find Its way eastward,
and is projected with its sea of warmth over
upon the northwestern coasts of America
There Is no other circulation possible for the
Pacific when Bshring Sea is blockaded, and
it is highly probable that when the earth is
passing under one of these enormous ''cold
waves" as Piazzi Smith designatcs them, the
result is an early and premature closing up Of
the Behring channel. We may comfort our
selves, therefore, with the conclusion to which
| these facts lead us, that in the winters Of
greatest severity our whole continent is tenn
pered by the warm water lying to windward Of
It, damned up in the vicinity Of the Aleutian
Islands, and having its warmth and vapoI
drifted by the westerly winds and spread as q
mantle Of heat over the whole country.
During the last cold snap the HERALD
showed conclusively that 1t was not due to the
transmission of cold atmosphere from the
Rocky Mountains, as the old theory explained
such severe spells, but that 1t was due to the
vast current of descending arctic air from the
northern part of British America, which had
been detected by the warm southwesterly