Climatic Changes: Their Nature and Causes

by Ellsworth Huntington; Stephen Sargent Visher

The strong steady trades and southwesterlies which would prevail at times of slight solar activity, according to our hypothesis, would have a pronounced effect on the water of the deep seas as well as upon that of the surface. In the first place, the deep-sea circulation would be hastened. For convenience let us speak of the northern hemisphere. In the past, whenever the southwesterly winds were steadier than now, as was probably the case when cyclonic storms were relatively rare, more surface water than at present was presumably driven from low latitudes and carried to high latitudes. This, of course, means that a greater volume of water had to flow back toward the equator in the lower parts of the ocean, or else as a cool surface current. The steady southwesterly winds, however, would interfere with south-flowing surface currents, thus compelling the polar waters to find their way equatorward beneath the surface. In low latitudes the polar waters would rise and their tendency would be to lower the temperature. Hence steadier westerlies would make for lessened latitudinal contrasts in climate not

only by driving more warm water poleward but by causing more polar water to reach low latitudes.

At this point a second important consideration must be faced. Not only would the deep-sea circulation be hastened, but the ocean depths might be warmed. The deep parts of the ocean are today cold because they receive their water from high latitudes where it sinks because of low temperature. Suppose, however, that a diminution in storminess combined with other conditions should permit corals to grow in latitude 70°N. The ocean temperature would then have to average scarcely lower than 20°C. and even in the coldest month the water could scarcely fall below about 15°C. Under such conditions, if the polar ocean were freely connected with the rest of the oceans, no part of it would probably have a temperature much below 10°C., for there would be no such thing as ice caps and snowfields to reflect the scanty sunlight and radiate into space what little heat there was. On the contrary, during the winter an almost constant state of dense fogginess would prevail. So great would be the blanketing effect of this that a minimum monthly temperature of 10°C. for the coldest part of the ocean may perhaps be too low for a time when corals thrived in latitude 70°.

The temperature of the ocean depths cannot permanently remain lower than that of the coldest parts of the surface. Temporarily this might indeed happen when a solar change first reduced the storminess and strengthened the westerlies and the surface currents. Gradually, however, the persistent deep-sea circulation would bring up the colder water in low latitudes and carry downward the water of medium temperature at the coldest part of the surface. Thus in time the whole body of the ocean would become warm. The heat which at present is carried away from the earth's surface in storms would slowly

accumulate in the oceans. As the process went on, all parts of the ocean's surface would become warmer, for equatorial latitudes would be less and less cooled by cold water from below, while the water blown from low latitudes to high would be correspondingly warmer. The warming of the ocean would come to an end only with the attainment of a state of equilibrium in which the loss of heat by radiation and evaporation from the ocean's surface equaled the loss which under other circumstances would arise from the rise of warm air in cyclonic storms. When once the oceans were warmed, they would form an extremely strong conservative force tending to preserve an equable climate in all latitudes and at all seasons. According to the solar cyclonic hypothesis such conditions ought to have prevailed throughout most of geological time. Only after a strong and prolonged solar disturbance with its consequent storminess would conditions like those of today be expected.

In this connection another possibility may be mentioned. It is commonly assumed that the earth's axis is held steadily in one direction by the fact that the rotating earth is a great gyroscope. Having been tilted to a certain position, perhaps by some extraneous force, the axis is supposed to maintain that position until some other force intervenes. Cordeiro,^[69] however, maintains that this is true only of an absolutely rigid gyroscope. He believes that it is mathematically demonstrable that if an elastic gyroscope be gradually tilted by some extraneous force, and if that force then ceases to act, the gyroscope as a whole will oscillate back and forth. The earth appears to be slightly elastic. Cordeiro therefore applies his formulæ to it, on the following assumptions: (1) That the original position of the axis was nearly vertical to the

plane of the ecliptic in which the earth revolves around the sun; (2) that at certain times the inclination has been even greater than now; and (3) that the position of the axis with reference to the earth has not changed to any great extent, that is, the earth's poles have remained essentially stationary with reference to the earth, although the whole earth has been gyroscopically tilted back and forth repeatedly.

With a vertical axis the daylight and darkness in all parts of the earth would be of equal duration, being always twelve hours. There would be no seasons, and the climate would approach the average condition now experienced at the two equinoxes. On the whole the climate of high latitudes would give the impression of being milder than now, for there would be less opportunity for the accumulation of snow and ice with their strong cooling effect. On the other hand, if the axis were tilted more than now, the winter nights would be longer and the winters more severe than at present, and there would be a tendency toward glaciation. Thus Cordeiro accounts for alternating mild and glacial epochs. The entire swing from the vertical position to the maximum inclination and back to the vertical may last millions of years depending on the earth's degree of elasticity. The swing beyond the vertical position in the other direction would be equally prolonged. Since the axis is now supposed to be much nearer its maximum than its minimum degree of tilting, the duration of epochs having a climate more severe than that of the present would be relatively short, while the mild epochs would be long.

Cordeiro's hypothesis has been almost completely ignored. One reason is that his treatment of geological facts, and especially his method of riding rough-shod over widely accepted conclusions, has not commended his

work to geologists. Therefore they have not deemed it worth while to urge mathematicians to test the assumptions and methods by which he reached his results. It is perhaps unfair to test Cordeiro by geology, for he lays no claim to being a geologist. In mathematics he labors under the disadvantage of having worked outside the usual professional channels, so that his work does not seem to have been subjected to sufficiently critical analysis.