LIST OF CHARTS
| CHART | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| [1.] | High and Low Centers of Action and Prevailing Winds of the Globe for July | 99 |
| [2.] | High and Low Centers of Action and Prevailing Winds of the Globe for January | 100 |
| [3.] | Winter Storm, December 15, 1893, 8 A.M. | 114 |
| [4.] | Winter Storm, December 15, 1893, 8 P.M. | 116 |
| [5.] | Winter Storm, December 16, 1893, 8 A.M. | 118 |
| [6.] | Cold Wave Zones, March to November. Amount of Fall and Verifying Limit | 127 |
| [7.] | Cold Wave Zones, December, January, and February. Amount of Fall and Verifying Limit | 128 |
| [8.] | Lowest Temperatures in the United States, 1871-1913 | 129 |
| [9.] | Number of Cold Waves, 1904-1914, Inclusive | 130 |
| [10.] | Storm Tracks for August for Ten Years | 132 |
| [11.] | Storm Tracks for February for Ten Years | 134 |
| [12.] | Average Maximum Temperature for July | 195 |
| [13.] | Ocean Currents | 196 |
| [14.] | Mean Annual Isotherms | 200 |
| [15.] | Normal Wind Direction and Velocity for January and February | 202 |
| [16.] | Normal Wind Direction and Velocity for July and August | 204 |
| [17.] | Map of Climatic Energy | 221 |
| [18.] | Density of Population in the United States, 1910 | 222 |
THE NEW AIR WORLD
CHAPTER I
ATMOSPHERES OF THE EARTH, THE SUN,
AND THE PLANETS
How Atmospheres Are Formed. Once there were no such things on the earth as hills and mountains, singing brooks, roaring rivers and vast oceans; and the delicately hued landscape, with its winding roads, hedges, flowers, green fields, and golden grain, had not evolved from the atmosphere. The earth had not yet cooled down to the condition of a solid crust, everything that the eye now sees existed in the form of invisible gases, or as clouds incandescent with white heat. Fiery blasts swirled over the face of the earth. Storms a million times more powerful than the most destructive West Indian hurricane of the present day moved through the indescribably hot atmosphere, throwing down not rain as we understand it, but liquid earth and metal, as their rising clouds ascended and cooled. It is difficult for the human mind to grasp the wonders of this.
Small planets cool quicker than large ones and sooner come to the conditions of a crust and to a temperature suitable for the development of the various forms of life.
Atmosphere of the Sun. To the unaided eye it appears as a smooth, bright, quiescent sphere, but the telescope reveals millions of agitations and hundreds of red flames that shoot outward to distances of hundreds of thousands of miles. One can form no adequate picture of the convulsions of the atmosphere of the sun. During eclipses, when the intense glare of its center is obscured, hydrogen flames may be seen darting outward for as much as a million miles.
Lifeless Planets. The larger a planet the longer is the time that must elapse before the hot vapors of rock and metal, which largely compose its early atmosphere, cool and congeal into a crust, leaving as a residual an atmosphere of such heat, density, and composition as to permit of the beginnings of the forms of life that have inhabited the world. Before the sun can reach this condition, an indescribable period will have elapsed, its light will have gone out, its heat will have ceased to reach the earth and the other planets in quantities sufficient to maintain life, the earth will have been dead millions of years, and the sun itself will only receive heat and light from the feeble rays of the stars that, unlike itself, have not yet ceased to shine. But even then the sun ever must remain dead, for there is no external source whence it may receive heat. No vegetation can adorn it, no water flow upon its surface, neither can the foot of any man press its soil.
Jupiter, and perhaps Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn, have hot atmospheres still in violent agitation,—molten surfaces composed of all kinds of matter, from which bubble and boil off hot clouds of vapor that surge about in huge eddies or cyclonic storms, and that here and there are shot outward in tongues of fire. The earth millions of years ago had a similar atmosphere. But when the heat energy of these vaporous planets wanes, and they cool down, as the earth did many years ago, the simplest forms of life cannot be evolved upon them, for they are too far away from the sun to receive life-giving heat. Mars receives less than half the intensity of the solar rays that come to the earth, Jupiter only 0.037, Saturn 0.011, Uranus 0.003, and Neptune 0.001.