THE CLIMATE OF ENGLAND

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 216, 8 June 1926, Page 3

THE CLIMATE OF ENGLAND

COULD BE MADE LIKE RIVIERA ENGINEERS FEASIBLE PROJECT TO BLOCK ARCTIC CURRENT All Rugland a Riviera; palm trees in London parks, and mild breezes blowing where now the chill March winds rage; duck suits in summer and light clothes all the winter through! These are some of the tempting visions conjured up for sufferers from the British climate by the scheme of M. Dimitri Joanovici, a Rumanian engineer, who holds that Britain should not take its climate lying down. As Mau the Engineer has changed the face of the earth for his purposes, making ships to ride above house-tops, cataracts to hew and draw for him like whipped slaves, and the wilderness to blossom as the rose, so may he come to regulate the temperature of the winds to his taste and turn the rain on and off as with a tap. This is the fascinating Jules Vernesque picture which 11. Joanovici paints for us, says-an English paper. Far awav among the boundless wastes of Northern Canada is a neck of water, eight miles wide, between two desolate shores, which bears the sinister name of Fury and Hecla Strait. It is through this narrow gap that the ice-laden waters of the Arctic Sea pour into Hudson Bay, and it is from Hudson Bay in its turn that the famous Labrador Current flows, hurling icebergs in the path of transAtlantic liners, closing the St. Lawrence River in winter with bars and bolts of frost, and making New York at certain months of the year the coldest capital in the world. Where Two Currents. Meet. It does more than that, however.. The Gulf Stream— climatically Britain’s only friend in the world—is met by the Labrador Current off the coast of the United States, and, as a result of the meeting its warmth is considerably reduced.' If the Labrador Current ceased to flow, or if it were not the icy current that it is now, the winds which are heated by the Gulf Stream and which eventually make England tolerable to live in, would be warmer than they are now. “Good, then!” proposes M. Joanovici. “Let us turn this Labrador Current into a flow of water at the ternperature of the Atlantic and not the Arctic Sea. In short, let us build a dam across Fury and Hecla Strait and shut the door on the ice.” . To further this amazing, project, M. Joanovici has recently visited London to confer with the High Commissioner (or Canada, the Admiralty, and the representatives of the States with seaboards on the Baltic. For he states that he believes that not only would his plan have the effect of opening the St Lawrence to all-year-round navigation and of effecting an improvement ou the climate of the British Isles, but would also free the Baltic Sea from ice during the winter. The gigantic and far-reaching results prophesied for such a comparatively small undertaking may well seem to place it in the region of phantasy rather than of practical engineering. But as a well-known Norwegian naval officer with unrivalled Arctic experience remarked when it was outlined to him, “Some schemes that seemed mad to the world eventually turned out to be of great practical importance, and tins dam niav be one of them.” An Engineering Problem. “There are grave difficulties in the way of constructing the dam,” added the engineer. “I have seen Arctic ice as it pours down through those channels between the islands of Northern Canada, and I know the . enormous pressure it exerts. Would it be possible to make a dam strong enougli to resist the attack of millions of tons of ice? That is one point for the engineers to settle. . “More important still is the question as to whether or not the Labrador Current comes in its entirety from Hudson Bav. There is not enough data to settle that yet. We know so. little about the movements of water in the Arctic seas that it is quite possible that the main source of the cold water flowing into the North Atlantic and meeting the Gulf Stream is the Davis Strait, off the coast of Greenland.” M. Joanovici’s scheme is not the first one in which the imagination of. a man lias been fired by the prospect of finding the key to the British climate in the island?' and straits of Arctic Canada. Such a scheme, elaborately worked'out by a Munich scientist, has been for some years among the archives at Canada House, the offices of the Canadian High Commissioner in London. Visionary as the scheme may be, it commends itself to all who have ever endured the rigours of a British spring. The prospect of an England bathed at all seasons in the sun-kissed winds of a Gulf Stream which has not suffered

from contact with Polar currents is too alluring to be quickly cast aside. A Meteorologist’s Vision. “An almost Mediterranean warmth,” said a prominent meteorologist with enthusiasm, “with the chance of passing some of our present rainfall over to Continental countries because of the rise in our temperature, and increased fertility and a wider range of homegrown fruits- These would all come to Britain if we could induce the Gulf Stream to add a few degrees to its temperature. “Summer sports in winter, bathing all the year round for everyone instead of only for the human Polar bears who indulge at present! These we should have along with the inconvenience of having to rebuild our houses and otherwise adjust our conditions of living to suit tlie new climate ”