THE GULF STREAM MYTH.

New Zealand Mail, 27 August 1902, Page 49 (Supplement)

THE GULF STREAM MYTH.

(Harvey Maitland Watts, in. "Scribner’s Magazine.’’)

The transformation of the Desert of Sahaia, into an island sea, and the dvversion of the Gulf Stream by means of a tide-level canal .at the Isthmus of Pana- “\ a - . 01 flamming at the Straits of r lon da, -were two fantastic projects that afforded a certain class of thinkers a chance for a deal of idle speculation a generation or so ago. The possible catacf\ sm, the menace to the very balance of the globe itself, that was supposedly inherent in the first proposition, if only. the Atlas Mountains could .be pierced by I)e Lesseps, was set off against the Arctic possibilities involved for the helpless .britisli Isles in tlie second if either plan of suppressing the Gulf Stream were ioxiiul feasible. But, fortunately for the rule oi common-sense, all that the imagination akin to that which has given the ..“A Tourney to the. Centre of the harth —had conjectured as to the Saharan scheme came to nothing when physiographic research laid bare the amusing * lac * l^ ll settled in the fifties by Barth—tliat, save in the case* ct two nisignificant pot-holes, the Sahara is, on tne whole, a hilly, mountainous, elevated plateau region, considerably above the level of the sea, and not at all a depression in the earth’s surface. And so with the second proiect. Though Captain Silas Bent impressed the St. Louis Historical Society, and caused a shiver of apprehension to pass over Great Britain some thirty years ago. when he described the gelid effects that would fellow his proposed diversion of the Gulf Stream, modern meteorology is complacently at ease when such a suggestion is mooted to-day since it knows that the Gulf Stream as an ocean current, has no more effect on the climate of I\ estern Europe than the ~ weather-vane has on the winds that turn it. The Gulf Stream in fact ’inc-ht bo engulfed at Colon or dammed at Ivey West, without anyone from the Scillys to the Hebrides being anv the wiser.

Jffiat the* belief that the Gulf Stream is the sole cause of the mild oceanic climate of Western Europe is still held, by millions to-day, and it is still taught, in the public schools in England and in the United States, and that, although it is absolutely without any foundation whatsoever, it should have come to have all the sacredness of a gospel • truth—is a tribute to its attractive statement by one man and to the hypnotic influence of one book. Only be in earnest in conviction and picturesque in diction, and vour opinion is assured of a safe-condnct‘ for several generations: In consequence, the “Gulf Stream myth,” fathered bv Maury, persists, while the broader, grander and more reassuring facts as to climate’ and weather causation are viewed with suspicion, and make slight headway against the universal acceptance of a theory that gained its whole value froiji the way it was stated by' a strong man in a transition period, in the development of m inexact science. The essential facts are that the Gulf Stream as an ocean current ceases to exist, that is, to differ in set and temperature from the rest of the ocean east of the longitude of Cape Race, Newfoundland. It cannot., therefore, convey, does not convey, warm water to the shores cf western Europe, there to modify the climate and give the British Isles the breezes of the_“unvexed Bermudas.” and Sweden and Norway the Warmth of the Oarolimas. But, above all, climatic causation is not a function of ocean currents, but of aerial - currents, and the mild oceanic climate of western Europe is due to the distribution by the permanent aerial circulation in the whole Atlantic basin of the moderating, mitigating effects of the ocean as' a whole. This permanent circulation takes the form of a great cyclone in high latitudes and of an enormous anti-cyclonic eddy in, midlatitudes, and to the "mid-Atlantic anfieyclouo the credit that has been held by the Gulf Stream these many years must be transferred; for, were this aerial eddy to continue as it is now, and the general atmospheric drift from west to east in the northern hemisphere to remain the same, the complete disappearance of the Gulf Stream' and all tlie ocean currents in the Atlantic would be.without, the slightest effect on the weather and climates of Europe. Any shifting of the anti-cyclone, however —and this means its consequent interaction with the permanent cyclone that determines the circulation in the Atlantic north of the latitude of Cape Race, and also with the travelling cyclones and anti-cyclones, that move eastward in the middle latitudes—produces a decided change in the weather, and a variation in climatic effects. And yet here again The* myth obtrudes, and the most significant, cosmical. and farreaching phenomena are glibly attributed to the “shifting of tlie Gulf Stream which very shifting itself is due on most occasions to the action of the wind currents of the anti-cyclone!

Poor, overworked Stream! Having borne the unequal burden of climatic causation for half a century, it is about time modern science was heard, and what may he called the warming-pan, hot water-bottle , theory of Maury and the post-Maury period given its quietus. Its glamour has distorted climatic facts all too long, and exaggerated personalities, so that for' the clearer view of to-day we must not only give up the Gulf Stream for the anti-cvclone but looking pa-t Maury, .hark back to Dr Benjamin Franklin to get the tme perspective cf the development of the Gulf Stream the-.—-

its domination of the imagination . civilised people