Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1922-11-15
WINTER LINE RETREATS
AS CLIMATE CHANGES
Statistics Show Frigid Belt 100 Miles
North of 25 Years Ago.



Are the winters growing colder or
warmer? Do those who say that it
was colder in their childhood than it
is now have good memories or is the
climate just as severe now as it ever
was?
We have evidence. Thousands of
observatories extended over period
of twenty-five years indicate that our
whole climate, both winter and sum-
mer, is 13 degrees warmer now than
it was in 1897. One degree in climate
equals about 100 miles in a north and
south direction.
Mild Season Ahead.
To find the kind of winters you eX-
perienced in Chicago twenty-five years
ago, you Chicagoans will have to go
to Saginaw, Mich, or Sheboygan, Wis,
for the isotherm of an old fashioned
winter has moved 100 miles north.
Winter is to be six weeks shorter
than usual this year, and the season
in general will be mild. Three Of the
six weeks will be cut from the autumn
end of the cold season, and three from
the spring side. We have already had
three, of our weeks this fall. We will
get the other three in April and May.
Reports have been filtering in from
the far north for the last three years
telling that the weather there has
been unusually mild. Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, the man who discovered
the blonde esquimaux and an eXplor-
er of considerable Arctic experience,
states that lately the edge of the Arc
tic ocean has been remarkably free of
ice Now reports from Norway tell of
vast body of warm water in the Gulf
stream surging up by Europe and
melting back the ice for 700 miles
north of North Cape.
Winters Lie In Arctic.
The source of our winters lies in
the Arctic ocean. Cold weather is not
a normal condition in the world. Dur
ing most of the earth's history a rath-
err genial climate has prevailed over
the United States. The present frig-
idity of the Arctic regions is due to
local geological causes. The slight
changes in the temperature of the
Arctic waters mean great changes,
either for cold or warmth, in Ameri-
ca.
The Arctic ocean is shaped like a
bottle It's mouth opens into the At
lantic ocean. On one side lies Europe
and Siberia, while directly opposite
lies America.
A stream of warm water is playing
on the mouth of the bottle. We call
it the gulf stream. 1t would like to
flow straight through, but it cannot,
70 there are no openings in the sides
whereby it might escape. 1t does the
next best thing and flows aroung the
,,;, Of civ, Iii no
lower as it goes, until it finally gets
| back to Greenland, where it flows out
| beneath the warm layer moving in.
A cold Arctic ocean is a refrigera-
tor on one side of America. In winter
when our hemisphere is directed away
from the sun, cold winds blow out
from it and bring snow over half this
continent.
Steadily Growing Warmer.
If the Arctic ocean were warm
there would be no winter here. Such
condition was not unknown in the
relatively immediate past. About So
900 years ago trees which now grow
in Tennessee grew at Toronto in Can
ada. Stumps of pawpaws and Usage
oranges are there, sticking in the mud,
to this day. The ice which dug the
great lakes came down and covered
them. Bones of musk oxen and arctic
hares lie directly over the pawpaws
and Immediately below the present
soil.
Our climate varies in swings, like a
great pendulum. The United States
is again steadily growing warmer In
the glacial period winters in Illinois
used to last all year, with perpetual
ice a mile deep over Chicago. For the
last $4,000 years the summer snow
line has been retreating. It used to
be at the Ohio river, it now stands in
northern Canada. Each winter it
sweeps down from the arctic regions
and each summer it is driven back.
Sometimes it averages an advance for
few years, and then we say our sea-
sons are cold. 1t may be stationary
for a while or give ground rapidly,
when we say that our seasons are as
usual or warm.