BAD SEASONS AHEAD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 23 July 1925, Page 8

BAD SEASONS AHEAD.

WHY THE WINTER IS WET

EXPERTS ANTICIPATE COLD

YEARS.

Bad as the weather has been of late, still worse conditions are forecasted by experts who make a business oi longrange anticipations. The weather is at. once the most familiar and the most mysterious factors affecting the daily life, and. considering there lias been weather all the millions of years there was a world, mankind knows surprisingly’ little about it. But scientists who have been study ing the earth and the sun of late claim now to have found the key to the weather, and to have found it not on the earth at all, but in the sun.

Unfortunately' the sun varies in temperature. and, as it varies in temperature, the small proportion of its heat that reaches the earth is also subject to variation. Now the great controlling factor in tlie weather of the world is the temperature of t-lie ocean, which absorbs heat slowly and also loses it slowly, whereas continents heat rapidly and coo-1 rapidly. If the oceans are warm the world experiences, on, the average, fair and warm seaeons; if the ocean is cold the seasons are bad. The sun passes through changes of temperature that are roughly regular. There is. for instance, one period of changes occupying 11 years, another period of 33 years, and still another of 55 years. Unfortunately, exact observations of the sun’s temperature do not extend back for more than JO years or so, hut during the 30 years sufficient has been learned to show that the changes are periodic and that they account for a rough periodicity in the world’s weather that has been the subject of observation for centuries.

The rise or fall in the heat of the sun does not produce an immediate effect upon the world’s- season. If the sun’s beat is above the average the ocean will be warmed gradually and the seasons will he affected in due course. Now, from 1917 to 1930 the sun was unusually hot, and by 1922 the world had had the benefit of the extra heat in thp shape of improved, or hot. seasons. But from 1920 the sun’s heat declined rapidly. The average or, as it is termed, the constant, for 1917-1920 wag so much higher than the constant for 1920-1923 that, on. the average, the world’s temperature must have declined hv four or five degrees Fahr. . Unfortunately, the decline m the sun’s- heat has not yet ceased, and if the experts are correct there are worse seasons than the present one in store for New Zealand, in common with the rest of the world. A year ago the experts anticipated that 1925 would he a severe year, and last year, of course, the Mother Country experienced an extremely wet summer. This year the conditions at Home appear to be a little better, due to causes in the northern hemisphere which need not be elaborated. But next year and the year after, it is anticipated, may witness a recurrence of conditions as, severe as any experienced in the world last century" The solar temperature should be at its lowest by next year. It may he, therefore, three or four years,"or even five years, before a re eovery of the seasons is experienced. The argument on which these forecasts are based is rather technical. Part of it was summarised in the Scientific American in August of last year by an American expert, and the curious may turn to his article for confirmation.

The outlook, if the scientists may he trusted, is distinctly gloomy, but there is always the consolation that the very influences that produce the worst conditions may also produce modifications that. mitigate the severity of the reasons.