LEAN YEARS PREDICTED

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8330, 16 January 1913, Page 10

LEAN YEARS PREDICTED

METEOROLOGIST’S VIEWS DREADED DROUGHT COMING IN AUSTRALIA. Mention has been made in our cablegrams that Mr Douglas Archibald, The eminent English meteorologist, is on his way to Rotorua, on a health visit. Mr Archibald, who was at one time a professor in the University of Calcutta, has for the past twcce years been supplying three-day period forecasts of British weather for the principal newspapers of the United Kingdom. He nade a study of meteorology in India and in 1876 discovered laws relating to the winter and summer rainfall in Northern India. Three years prior to its appearance he predicted the great 1896 to 1900 drought rrnich devastated India. Ho lias predicted another severe drought in Australia. He says it will begin about 1917, and will probably be most acute between 1920 and 1924, continuing more or less till 1937 (says the Sydney “Morning Herald”). He bases tills opinion on the data collected by Professor Bruckner, whose observations and calculations he calls “facts” and not “theories.” THE BRUCKNER WAVE.

Professor Bruckner’s well-known discovery regarding our weather laws is the result of research work into past weather history, as noted in reliable records extending over 200 years, whilst ho has also taken into account the weather liistory dating hack in regard to mere temperature to the year 1100. The Professor has shown—most conclusively, according to Air Archibald—that we have alternate cycles of wet and dry weather in waves of thirty-five years’ duration each. As for himself, Mr Archibald claims the discovery of a method of weather deduction whereby the Bruckner waves in comparison with the eleven-year waves or oscillations of sun-spots give the result, and it was by this method that he was able to predict correctly the great Indian Limine. The Bruckner wave, or oscillation, being longer «nd greater than that of the sun-spots, exercises tno dominating influence in regard to weather.

In illustration of his remarks, Mr Archibald cites the case of the past year. The sun-spot wave was at its minimum, which meant the driest of weather if it had to be considered alone; hut it so happened that the Bruckner wave was at its maximum and dominated the sun-spot wave, bringing in wet weather. The wet weather, however, was counteracted to some extent by the minimum of the sun-spot oscillation, thus leading to temporary local droughts. The sunspot oscillation has now begun to climb to its maximum, and the Bruckner wave, more slowly, will gradually descend to its minimum. The sun-spot oscillation will have reached its maximum in 1915, and our visitor tells us that we shall have a very ’wet season, but two years after that—in 1917—the oscillation will be on its way down to minimum again, as also will the Bruckner wave, and tnen will begin a general drought. THE WARNING. It behoves us, he says, to make hay while the sun shines, and prepare to meet the drought, for to Mr Archibald nothing is more certain than that it is coming—and he has a reputation to lose if he is wrong. The drought will be severe from about 1920 to 1924, but by 1927 the sun-spot oscillation will have again reached its maximum, and the conditions will improve. The drought, however, will not then be over, by any means; it will continue, more or less, until 1937, the last ten years again being severe. We are launching out in the matter ofTrrigation, and it is none too soon; when the big drought does come we shall realise to the full the value of irrigation. It is an interesting fact, as disclosed by patient .observation and research, that for one period of seventeen years the rainfall on land areas is greater than the average, and during the next period of seventeen years it is less than the average. In the seventeen years of the wet cycles the atmospheric pressure over the ocean is relatively higher, and over the land areas relatively lower than the average. The reverse is the case during the years in which the drier conditions prevail, so that at present, owing to the fact that we are in the middle of the wet half of the Bruckner wave, we are having more rain in the interior of continents and loss on the ocean areas. The further the area from the sea, the greater the effect of the Bruckner wave. In Siberia the rainfall is three times as great as in Europe, and the dry weather, when its turn comes, is three times as dry as that of Europe. “The Bruckner wave is a long one—-thirty-five years,” says Mr Archibald, “and few men live through more than two of them. W© are now about to enter upon a new one, and a minimum one at that, which means a return to the old weather conditions which some people imagine we have lost.”