Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-15
NORTH POLE HELD
ONCE TEMPERATE,
But NOT TROPICAL
Johns Hopkins Professor
Makes Report on Former
Climate of Arctic Regions.
FOSSILS ARE EXAMINED
TO EXPLAIN COAL FIELDS
Theory That Earth Has Shifted
Disputed by Scientist
Following Study.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

middle Of a. tropical jungle, but few
hundred million years ago it might have
been a pleasant location for a Summer
resort.
Such Is the conclusion Of Prof. Ed
ward w. Berry Of Johns Hopkins Uni
versity, whose study Of the strange
enigma of Arctic climates In the dis
tant past has just been published by
the Smithsonian Institution.
For a century science has been puz-
zled by the discovery of plant fossils
in the Far North, whose present rela-
tiveS are found only near the Equator.
In Spitzbergen and ElleSmere land there
are great coal deposits. This means
that the lands now closest to the pole
must have been covered by dense, rap
idly growing forests when the coal beds
were formed. But no body has been
able to explain clearly why the pres
ent desolations of snow and Ice once
should have been more like the Valley
of the Amazon.
Several HYPOTHESIS.
Some have maintained that the posi-
ton of the earth has changed with re-
spect to the sun. Others believe that
when the coal beds were laid down the
lands themselves were somewhere else
and drifted into their present position.
Still others have held that once there
was about the same climate all over
the earth, due to the heat coming from
the cooling globe itself which was pre-
vented from escaping rapidly into space
the surface, through which penetrated
male tinted SUNLIGHT
Berry's answer Is that tropical con-
ditions were not necessary for the for
nation Of the coal beds, that there Is
q difference between tropical geography
and tropical climate, and that most OF
the answers to the enigma in the past
have been armchair philosophy"
Berry went back to a detailed eXamina-
ton of the actual fossils of plants, most
Of which can be identified, and then
studied their actual distribution today.
He finds that they could have grown
very well in q temperate climate and
that no wierd hypothesis are necessary
TO explain their presence beyond the
Arctic Circle.
OF course, conditions were vastly diff
terent than they are today, when con-
ditions in the Far North are so inhoSpi-
table to life that it required centuries
for man to reach the North Pole and
vast, thick ice sheets cover what were
once flourishing, wet forests.
Worlds Coolest Spot.
But, while explaining the transition
from ice sheet to hot jungle puts q
heavy strain on the imagination, Berry
points out, the transition from cold
to merely cool climate can have been
brought about by slow, slight and I'M
ahor0oc IN thn diefrihlIfi0Y1
of land and water. There are still
lands close to the Arctic Circle which
have abundant vegetation, such as Alas
ka and Northern Norway. Other lands
in the same latitude are ice covered or
so cold that they have only dwarf veg
ettion. This is because they happen to
be situated fortunately in the land-and-
water pattern. The coolest spot on
earth Is not at the North Pole, but
hundreds of miles to the southwark In
Northern Siberia.
Water heats and cools slowly. Land
heats and cools rapidly. They counter
balance each other. The climate of the
world, Berry points out, depends on
small shifts In location and amounts of
land and water. Western Europe, for
instance, Is heated by the Gulf Stream
and made habitable much farther north
than Is the case in North America. It
happens that II Cape San Rogue on
the Eastern coast Of Brazil were two
degrees farther north almost half the
warm water which goes to make up the
Gulf Stream would flow south instead
Of north, and Northern Europe probab-
ly would be desolate waste.
Now in the days when the rich Arctic
fora fiourished, Berry points out, land
was distributed differently than it is
today and some of the present land
mass in the Northern Hemisphere was
under water. This would have brought
about g freer ocean circulation and
prevented the formation of so much
ice in the Arctic Ocean, although the
receipt Of heat from the sun may have
been essentially the same.
Would Mean Changes.
"This," he says, would mean pro-
found changes In the distribution OF
barop trio pressures and consequent
wind circulation and, in fact, Of all the
elements that constitute climate. It
would mean that in Western Greenland
the present glacial anti-cyclonic winds
westerly winds blowing from the rela.
lively warmed waters of Baffins Bay.
This does not mean that there would
be tropical climates in the Arctic or
that the region would not be ice bound
in the Winter. The protective effect
of snow and cold sufncient to cause a
cessation of plant activity during the
Arctic night are q physiological ne
cessity."
AS for the tropical plant fossils-Berry
answers that they are not necessarily
tropical at all. Some Of them today
are found chiefly in the tropics geo
but at elevations where the
actual climate is decidedly temperate.
Actual conditions close to those OF the
Arctic are found on high mountain tops
close to the equator. Moreover, varie-
ties Of supposedly tropical plants are
found growing well In temperate cli-
mates, Berry points out. Palms extend
into Northern California. Figs ripen as
far north as Baltimore. Certain va
rieties Of large plant families, he ex-
plains, are bound to be- harder than
others. Great tree ferns, such as are
credited with forming coal deposits, are
not primarily tropical. but wet temper
ate growths, he says, reaching their
greatest present-day exuberance IN wet
New Zealand.
Relatives Of some of the fossil plants
found in the Far North are growing
there today. where they can find soil
that is not covered with ice for few
weeks, but with greatly diminished size,
he says. Altogether, he explains, quite
plausible physical changes would have
produced In the past an Arctic climate
where such forests would have HOUR
ished.
But nobody would have suffered
greatly from heat there, II there nad
been men when tbs coal deposits were