Climatic Changes Part 5

The slightness of changes in mean temperature as compared with changes in rainfall may be judged from a comparison of wet and dry years in various regions. For example, at Berlin between 1866 and 1905 the ten most rainy years had an average precipitation of 670 mm. and a mean temperature of 9.15C. On the other hand, the ten years of least rainfall had an average of 483 mm. and a mean temperature of 9.35. In other words, a difference of 137 mm., or 39 per cent, in rainfall was accompanied by a difference of only 0.2C. in temperature. Such contrasts between the variability of mean rainfall and mean temperature are observable not only when individual years are selected, but when much longer periods are taken. For instance, in the western Gulf region of the United States the two inland stations of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Shreveport, Louisiana, and the two maritime stations of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas, lie at the margins of an area about 400 miles long. During the ten years from 1875 to 1884 their rainfall averaged 59.4 inches,[30] while during the ten years from 1890 to 1899 it averaged only 42.4 inches. Even in a region so well watered as the Gulf States, such a change--40 per cent more in the first decade than in the second--is important, and in drier regions it would have a great effect on habitability. Yet in spite of the magnitude of the change the mean temperature was not appreciably different, the average for the four stations being 67.36F. during the more rainy decade and 66.94F. during the less rainy decade--a difference of only 0.42F. It is worth noticing that in this case the wetter period was also the warmer, whereas in Berlin it was the cooler. This is probably because a large part of the moisture of the Gulf States is brought by winds having a southerly component. Similar relations.h.i.+ps are apparent in other places. We select Jerusalem because we have been discussing Palestine. At the time of writing, the data available in the _Quarterly Journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund_ cover the years from 1882-1899 and 1903-1909. Among these twenty-five years the thirteen which had most rain had an average of 34.1 inches and a temperature of 62.04F. The twelve with least rain had 24.4 inches and a temperature of 62.44. A difference of 40 per cent in rainfall was accompanied by a difference of only 0.4F. in temperature.

The facts set forth in the preceding paragraphs seem to show that extensive changes in precipitation and storminess can take place without appreciable changes of mean temperature. If such changed conditions can persist for ten years, as in one of our examples, there is no logical reason why they cannot persist for a hundred or a thousand. The evidence of changes in climate during the historic period seems to suggest changes in precipitation much more than in temperature. Hence the strongest of all the arguments against historic changes of climate seems to be of relatively little weight, and the pulsatory hypothesis seems to be in accord with all the known facts.

Before the true nature of climatic changes, whether historic or geologic, can be rightly understood, another point needs emphasis. When the pulsatory hypothesis was first framed, it fell into the same error as the hypotheses of uniformity and of progressive change--that is, the a.s.sumption was made that the whole world is either growing drier or moister with each pulsation. A study of the ruins of Yucatan, in 1912, and of Guatemala, in 1913, as is explained in _The Climatic Factor_, has led to the conclusion that the climate of those regions has changed in the opposite way from the changes which appear to have taken place in the desert regions farther south. These Maya ruins in Central America are in many cases located in regions of such heavy rainfall, such dense forests, and such malignant fevers that habitation is now practically impossible. The land cannot be cultivated except in especially favorable places. The people are terribly weakened by disease and are among the lowest in Central America. Only a hundred miles from the unhealthful forests we find healthful areas, such as the coasts of Yucatan and the plateau of Guatemala. Here the vast majority of the population is gathered, the large towns are located, and the only progressive people are found. Nevertheless, in the past the region of the forests was the home of by far the most progressive people who are ever known to have lived in America previous to the days of Columbus. They alone brought to high perfection the art of sculpture; they were the only American people who invented the art of writing. It seems scarcely credible that such a people would have lived in the worst possible habitat when far more favored regions were close at hand. Therefore it seems as if the climate of eastern Guatemala and Yucatan must have been relatively dry at some past time. The Maya chronology and traditions indicate that this was probably at the same time when moister conditions apparently prevailed in the subarid or desert portions of the United States and Asia. Fig. 3 shows that today at times of many sunspots there is a similar opposition between a tendency toward storminess and rain in subtropical regions and toward aridity in low lat.i.tudes near the heat equator.

Thus our final conclusion is that during historic times there have been pulsatory changes of climate. These changes have been of the same type in regions having similar kinds of climate, but of different and sometimes opposite types in places having diverse climates. As to the cause of the pulsations, they cannot have been due to the precession of the equinoxes nor apparently to any allied astronomical cause, for the time intervals are too short and too irregular. They cannot have been due to changes in the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for not even the strongest believers in the climatic efficacy of that gas hold that its amount could fluctuate in any such violent way as would be necessary to explain the pulsations shown in the California curve of tree growth. Volcanic activity seems more probable as at least a partial cause, and it would be worth while to investigate the matter more fully. Nevertheless, it can apparently be only a minor cause. In the first place, the main effect of a cloud of dust is to alter the temperature, but Gregory's summary of the palm and the vine shows that variations in temperature are apparently of very slight importance during historic times. Again, ruins on the bottoms of enclosed salt lakes, old beaches now under the water, and signs of irrigation ditches where none are now needed indicate a climate drier than the present.

Volcanic dust, however, cannot account for such a condition, for at present the air seems to be practically free from such dust for long periods. Thus we now experience the greatest extreme which the volcanic hypothesis permits in one direction, but there have been greater extremes in the same direction. The thermal solar hypothesis is likewise unable to explain the observed phenomena, for neither it nor the volcanic hypothesis offers any explanation of why the climate varies in one way in Mediterranean climates and in an opposite way in regions near the heat equator.

This leaves the cyclonic hypothesis. It seems to fit the facts, for variations in cyclonic storms cause some regions to be moister and others drier than usual. At the same time the variations in temperature are slight, and are apparently different in different regions, some places growing warm when others grow cool. In the next chapter we shall study this matter more fully, for it can best be appreciated by examining the course of events in a specific century.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: Much of this chapter is taken from The Solar Hypothesis of Climatic Changes; Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 25, 1914.]

[Footnote 17: Ellsworth Huntington: Explorations in Turkestan, 1905; The Pulse of Asia, 1907; Palestine and Its Transformation, 1911; The Climatic Factor, 1915; World Power and Evolution, 1919.]

[Footnote 18: J. Hann: Klimatologie, Vol. 1, 1908, p. 352.]

[Footnote 19: H. C. Butler: Desert Syria, the Land of a Lost Civilization; Geographical Review, Feb., 1920, pp. 77-108.]

[Footnote 20: This is due to the fact that where these forests occur, in Gilead for example, the mountains to the west break down, so that the west winds with water from the Mediterranean are able to reach the inner range without having lost all their water. It is one of the misfortunes of Syria that its mountains generally rise so close to the sea that they shut off rainfall from the interior and cause the rain to fall on slopes too steep for easy cultivation.]

[Footnote 21: H. Leiter: Die Frage der Klimaanderung waherend geschichtlicher Zeit in Nordafrika. Abhandl. K. K. Geographischen Gesellschaft, Wien, 1909, p. 143.]

[Footnote 22: A most careful and convincing study of this problem is embodied in an article by J. W. Smith: The Effects of Weather upon the Yield of Corn; Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 42, 1914, pp. 78-92. On the basis of the yield of corn in Ohio for 60 years and in other states for shorter periods, he shows that the rainfall of July has almost as much influence on the crop as has the rainfall of all other months combined.

See his Agricultural Meteorology, New York, 1920.]

[Footnote 23: See chapter by A. E. Dougla.s.s in The Climatic Factor; and his book on Climatic Cycles and Tree-Growth; Carnegie Inst., 1919. Also article by M. N. Stewart: The Relation of Precipitation to Tree Growth, in the Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 41, 1913.]

[Footnote 24: The dotted line is taken from Palestine and Its Transformation, pp. 327 and 403.]

[Footnote 25: M. A. Stein: Ruins of Desert Cathay, London, 1912.]

[Footnote 26: In the preparation and interpretation of this table the help of Mr. G. B. Cressey is gratefully acknowledged.]

[Footnote 27: For the tree data used in these comparisons, see The Climatic Factor P. 328, and A. E. Dougla.s.s: Climatic Cycles and Tree Growth, p. 123.]

[Footnote A: One year interpolated.]

[Footnote 28: J. W. Gregory: Is the Earth Drying Up? Geog. Jour., Vol.

43, 1914, pp. 148-172 and 293-318.]

[Footnote 29: Geog. Jour., Vol. 43, pp. 159-161.]

[Footnote 30: See A. J. Henry: Secular Variation of Precipitation in the United States; Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., Vol. 46, 1914, pp. 192-201.]

CHAPTER VI

THE CLIMATIC STRESS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

In order to give concreteness to our picture of the climatic pulsations of historic times let us take a specific period and see how its changes of climate were distributed over the globe and how they are related to the little changes which now take place in the sunspot cycle. We will take the fourteenth century of the Christian era, especially the first half. This period is chosen because it is the last and hence the best known of the times when the climate of the earth seems to have taken a considerable swing toward the conditions which now prevail when the sun is most active, and which, if intensified, would apparently lead to glaciation. It has already been discussed in _World Power and Evolution_, but its importance and the fact that new evidence is constantly coming to light warrant a fuller discussion.

To begin with Europe; according to the careful account of Pettersson[31]

the fourteenth century shows

a record of extreme climatic variations. In the cold winters the rivers Rhine, Danube, Thames, and Po were frozen for weeks and months. On these cold winters there followed violent floods, so that the rivers mentioned inundated their valleys. Such floods are recorded in 55 summers in the 14th century. There is, of course, nothing astonis.h.i.+ng in the fact that the inundations of the great rivers of Europe were more devastating 600 to 700 years ago than in our days, when the flow of the rivers has been regulated by ca.n.a.ls, locks, etc.; but still the inundations in the 13th and 14th centuries must have surpa.s.sed everything of that kind which has occurred since then. In 1342 the waters of the Rhine rose so high that they inundated the city of Mayence and the Cathedral "usque ad cingulum hominis." The walls of Cologne were flooded so that they could be pa.s.sed by boats in July. This occurred also in 1374 in the midst of the month of February, which is of course an unusual season for disasters of the kind. Again in other years the drought was so intense that the same rivers, the Danube, Rhine, and others, nearly dried up, and the Rhine could be forded at Cologne. This happened at least twice in the same century. There is one exceptional summer of such evil record that centuries afterwards it was spoken of as "the old hot summer of 1357."

Pettersson goes on to speak of two oceanic phenomena on which the old chronicles lay greater stress than on all others:

The first [is] the great storm-floods on the coast of the North Sea and the Baltic, which occurred so frequently that not less than nineteen floods of a destructiveness unparalleled in later times are recorded from the 14th century. The coastline of the North Sea was completely altered by these floods. Thus on January 16, 1300, half of the island Heligoland and many other islands were engulfed by the sea. The same fate overtook the island of Bork.u.m, torn into several islands by the storm-flood of January 16, which remoulded the Frisian Islands into their present shape, when also Wendingstadt, on the island of Sylt, and Thiryu parishes were engulfed. This flood is known under the name of "the great man-drowning." The coasts of the Baltic also were exposed to storm-floods of unparalleled violence.

On November 1, 1304, the island of Ruden was torn asunder from Rugen by the force of the waves. Time does not allow me to dwell upon individual disasters of this kind, but it will be well to note that of the nineteen great floods on record eighteen occurred in the cold season between the autumnal and vernal equinoxes.

The second remarkable phenomenon mentioned by the chronicles is the freezing of the entire Baltic, which occurred many times during the cold winters of these centuries. On such occasions it was possible to travel with carriages over the ice from Sweden to Bornholm and from Denmark to the German coast (Lubeck), and in some cases even from Gotland to the coast of Estland.

Norlind[32] says that "the only authentic accounts" of the complete freezing of the Baltic in the neighborhood of the Kattegat are in the years 1296, 1306, 1323, and 1408. Of these 1296 is "much the most uncertain," while 1323 was the coldest year ever recorded, as appears from the fact that horses and sleighs crossed regularly from Sweden to Germany on the ice.

Not only central Europe and the sh.o.r.es of the North Sea were marked by climatic stress during the fourteenth century, but Scandinavia also suffered. As Pettersson puts it:

On examining the historic (data) from the last centuries of the Middle Ages, Dr. Bull of Christiania has come to the conclusion that the decay of the Norwegian kingdom was not so much a consequence of the political conditions at that time, as of the frequent failures of the harvest so that corn [wheat] for bread had to be imported from Lubeck, Rostock, Wismar and so forth. The Hansa Union undertook the importation and obtained political power by its economic influence. The Norwegian land-owners were forced to lower their rents. The population decreased and became impoverished. The revenue sank 60 to 70 per cent. Even the income from Church property decreased. In 1367 corn was imported from Lubeck to a value of one-half million kroner. The trade balance inclined to the disadvantage of Norway whose sole article of export at that time was dried fish. (The production of fish increased enormously in the Baltic regions off south Sweden because of the same changes which were influencing the lands, but this did not benefit Norway.) Dr. Bull draws a comparison with the conditions described in the Sagas when Nordland [at the Arctic Circle] produced enough corn to feed the inhabitants of the country. At the time of Asbjorn Selsbane the chieftains in Trondhenas [still farther north in lat.i.tude 69] grew so much corn that they did not need to go southward to buy corn unless three successive years of dearth had occurred. The province of Trondheim exported wheat to Iceland and so forth. Probably the turbulent political state of Scandinavia at the end of the Middle Ages was in a great measure due to unfavorable climatic conditions, which lowered the standard of life, and not entirely to misgovernment and political strife as has. .h.i.therto been taken for granted.

During this same unfortunate first half of the fourteenth century England also suffered from conditions which, if sufficiently intensified, might be those of a glacial period. According to Thorwald Rogers[33] the severest famine ever experienced in England was that of 1315-1316, and the next worst was in 1321. In fact, from 1308 to 1322 great scarcity of food prevailed most of the time. Other famines of less severity occurred in 1351 and 1369. "The same cause was at work in all these cases," says Rogers, "incessant rain, and cold, stormy summers. It is said that the inclemency of the seasons affected the cattle, and that numbers perished from disease and want." After the bad harvest of 1315 the price of wheat, which was already high, rose rapidly, and in May, 1316, was about five times the average. For a year or more thereafter it remained at three or four times the ordinary level. The severity of the famine may be judged from the fact that previous to the Great War the most notable scarcity of wheat in modern England and the highest relative price was in December, 1800. At that time wheat cost nearly three times the usual amount, instead of five as in 1316. During the famine of the early fourteenth century "it is said that people were reduced to subsist upon roots, upon horses and dogs, and stories are told of even more terrible acts by reason of the extreme famine." The number of deaths was so great that the price of labor suffered a permanent rise of at least 10 per cent. There simply were not people enough left among the peasants to do the work demanded by the more prosperous cla.s.s who had not suffered so much.

After the famine came drought. The year 1325 appears to have been peculiarly dry, and 1331, 1344, 1362, 1374, and 1377 were also dry. In general these conditions do little harm in England. They are of interest chiefly as showing how excessive rain and drought are apt to succeed one another.

These facts regarding northern and central Europe during the fourteenth century are particularly significant when compared with the conclusions which we have drawn in _Earth and Sun_ from the growth of trees in Germany and from the distribution of storms. A careful study of all the facts shows that we are dealing with two distinct types of phenomena. In the first place, the climate of central Europe seems to have been peculiarly continental during the fourteenth century. The winters were so cold that the rivers froze, and the summers were so wet that there were floods every other year or oftener. This seems to be merely an intensification of the conditions which prevail at the present time during periods of many sunspots, as indicated by the growth of trees at Eberswalde in Germany and by the number of storms in winter as compared with summer. The prevalence of droughts, especially in the spring, is also not inconsistent with the existence of floods at other seasons, for one of the chief characteristics of a continental climate is that the variations from one season to another are more marked than in oceanic climates. Even the summer droughts are typically continental, for when continental conditions prevail, the difference between the same season in different years is extreme, as is well ill.u.s.trated in Kansas. It must always be remembered that what causes famine is not so much absolute dryness as a temporary diminution of the rainfall.

The second type of phenomena is peculiarly oceanic in character. It consists of two parts, both of which are precisely what would be expected if a highly continental climate prevailed over the land. In the first place, at certain times the cold area of high pressure, which is the predominating characteristic of a continent during the winter, apparently spread out over the neighboring oceans. Under such conditions an inland sea, such as the Baltic, would be frozen, so that horses could cross the ice even in the Far West. In the second place, because of the unusually high pressure over the continent, the barometric gradients apparently became intensified. Hence at the margin of the continental high-pressure area the winds were unusually strong and the storms of corresponding severity. Some of these storms may have pa.s.sed entirely along oceanic tracks, while others invaded the borders of the land, and gave rise to the floods and to the wearing away of the coast described by Pettersson.

Turning now to the east of Europe, Bruckner's[34] study of the Caspian Sea shows that that region as well as western Europe was subject to great climatic vicissitudes in the first half of the fourteenth century.

In 1306-1307 the Caspian Sea, after rising rapidly for several years, stood thirty-seven feet above the present level and it probably rose still higher during the succeeding decades. At least it remained at a high level, for Hamdulla, the Persian, tells us that in 1325 a place called Aboskun was under water.[35]

Still further east the inland lake of Lop Nor also rose at about this time. According to a Chinese account the Dragon Town on the sh.o.r.e of Lop Nor was destroyed by a flood. From Himley's translation it appears that the level of the lake rose so as to overwhelm the city completely. This would necessitate the expansion of the lake to a point eighty miles east of Lulan, and fully fifty from the present eastern end of the Kara Koshun marsh. The water would have to rise nearly, or quite, to a strand which is now clearly visible at a height of twelve feet above the modern lake or marsh.

In India the fourteenth century was characterized by what appears to have been the most disastrous drought in all history. Apparently the decrease in rainfall here was as striking as the increase in other parts of the world. No statistics are available but we are told that in the great famine which began in 1344 even the Mogul emperor was unable to obtain the necessaries of life for his household. No rain worth mentioning fell for years. In some places the famine lasted three or four years, and in some twelve, and entire cities were left without an inhabitant. In a later famine, 1769-1770, which occurred in Bengal shortly after the foundation of British rule in India, but while the native officials were still in power, a third of the population, or ten out of thirty millions, perished. The famine in the first half of the fourteenth century seems to have been far worse. These Indian famines were apparently due to weak summer monsoons caused presumably by the failure of central Asia to warm up as much as usual. The heavier snowfall, and the greater cloudiness of the summer there, which probably accompanied increased storminess, may have been the reason.

The New World as well as the Old appears to have been in a state of climatic stress during the first half of the fourteenth century.

According to Pettersson, Greenland furnishes an example of this. At first the inhabitants of that northland were fairly prosperous and were able to approach from Iceland without much hindrance from the ice. Today the North Atlantic Ocean northeast of Iceland is full of drift ice much of the time. The border of the ice varies from season to season, but in general it extends westward from Iceland not far from the Arctic circle and then follows the coast of Greenland southward to Cape Farewell at the southern tip and around to the western side for fifty miles or more.

Except under exceptional circ.u.mstances a s.h.i.+p cannot approach the coast until well northward on the comparatively ice-free west coast. In the old Sagas, however, nothing is said of ice in this region. The route from Iceland to Greenland is carefully described. In the earliest times it went from Iceland a trifle north of west so as to approach the coast of Greenland after as short an ocean pa.s.sage as possible. Then it went down the coast in a region where approach is now practically impossible because of the ice. At that time this coast was icy close to the sh.o.r.e, but there is no sign that navigation was rendered difficult as is now the case. Today no navigator would think of keeping close inland. The old route also went _north_ of the island on which Cape Farewell is located, although the narrow channel between the island and the mainland is now so blocked with ice that no modern vessel has ever penetrated it.

By the thirteenth century, however, there appears to have been a change.

In the Kungaspegel or _Kings' Mirror_, written at that time, navigators are warned not to make the east coast too soon on account of ice, but no new route is recommended in the neighborhood of Cape Farewell or elsewhere. Finally, however, at the end of the fourteenth century, nearly 150 years after the Kungaspegel, the old sailing route was abandoned, and s.h.i.+ps from Iceland sailed directly southwest to avoid the ice. As Pettersson says:

... At the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century the European civilization in Greenland was wiped out by an invasion of the aboriginal population. The colonists in the Vesterbygd were driven from their homes and probably migrated to America leaving behind their cattle in the fields. So they were found by Ivar Bardsson, steward to the Bishop of Gardar, in his official journey thither in 1342.

The Eskimo invasion must not be regarded as a common raid. It was the transmigration of a people, and like other big movements of this kind [was] impelled by altered conditions of nature, in this case the alterations of climate caused by [or which caused?] the advance of the ice. For their hunting and fis.h.i.+ng the Eskimos require an at least partially open arctic sea. The seal, their princ.i.p.al prey, cannot live where the surface of the sea is entirely frozen over.