CHANGING CLIMATES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18684, 13 February 1929, Page 9

CHANGING CLIMATES.

To the Editor. Dear Sir,—ln your cable news on Monday appeared the following under date Berlin, February B:—“The ice in the Western Baltic is worse, despite the pounding efforts of two pre-Dread-noughts. Twenty ships are marooned, and all the harbours are ice-bound.” A few months back the most interestmg item was that the sea bottom in the North Atlantic was found to be a mile less in depth than when the first roDA gr f ph cable was laid - Think of it, 5280 feet less! That can only mean that a range of submarine mountains has been thrust up steadily at a rate of over 100 feet a year. I say steadily advisedly, because Nature so works as rule. So the land in the Hauraki Gulf, and in Tasman Bay—Auckland and Nelson—has risen three feet in the past seventy-five years—at least, so say the Admiralty charts, according to a given authority. We in New Zealand are .slow, at least, our earthquakes are, for at times you can hear the rumble of their coming several seconds before the shakes come, so we suffer but little damage. In Japan the earth waves travel very quickly, hence their destructiveness in that country. Now, compare our rise of land in, say, eighty years—-three feet—with the rise in the Atlantic area of sixty-six feet per year. I do not know that any scientific body such as the officers of H.M. Navy have verified this. I should imagine it to be well worth looking into, since from Mauray’s days we have been led to believe that the warm Gulf Stream rendered Eastern Europe generally pleasant and habitable. If this submarine range is growing it will gradually turn more and more of the volume of this warm water away from Europe, diverting it to the shores of Labrador, so that, instead of being an ice-bound land with temperatures of 50 and 60 degrees below freezing point, it will have the climate of Ireland, only perhaps more so, and glaciers will cover Europe to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Scilly Islands are about 50 degrees north, and they grow early flowers there for the London market; little farther north Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence form the corresponding part of the world on the other side of the Atlantic. Aberdeen is a little north of 57 degrees on the east, whilst the frozen lands of Labrador, Ungava and Hudson’s Bay in general correspond to it in the west. The difference in climates is caused by the Gulf Stream, and its diversion would wipe out the civilisation of Europe.—l am, etc., THOMAS A. TURNBULL. Worcester Street, Christchurch.