Evening Star Newspaper, January 31, 1932, Page 86

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 31, 1932 xplaining The Freak Weather Spring Days in the East in January, Snow in Southern California—Are Changes in the Sun’s Radiation Behind Such Freak Weather 7—Such a Link Is Suggested by Dr. C. G. Abbot, Head of the Smithsonian Institution, 11"ho Also Sees a Possibility of Long-Range Forecasts. IHE world is a wheel,” said II aeli, “and it will come all right.” But, hile, what strange and fairies it brings nd! To have freezing weather in California orange groves and simultaneous! temporature of 69 de- grees in New E ynd, with Massachu- setts farmers doing their Spring plowing in January and Vermont housewives gathering dandelon greens from their front lawns whiie Nebraska digs out from under a snowdrifts and New Mexico is tortured by a blizzard— these odd reversal f the past month make the defin n of “all right” some- what vagu I I ather mechanism a gigantic rou el in which chance is the only 1 The pecul that it may b than usual all ¢ cept along tl ; of 1931 suggest ar was warmer ited States, ex- iern Rio Grande bor- der and i la., two Southern regions that L mi expect to be baked a little hotter. but which instead were colder th ua i continent the ex- ncrmal piled up enor- he end of 1931, ex- ceeding 2.000 in some sections, in Milwaukee, for an and in Duluth, Sioux City, ron, S. Dak.,, and Bismarck—) the identical Bismarck that has some deep below-zero notches In its blizzard-bitten past Such scattered Northern cities as Ithaca, N i Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Spx » stewed through the hottest days of their history in 1931. New York, always famous for lavish spending, hoarded 1,053 deczrees of surplus heat, while Philadelphia, even more frugal and provident, stored up 1,574 degrees And now it's turning out to be a gen- tle Winter in the though a wild 'un in the West. Ice ha ters on the New Jersey lakes, acc to a profitable cutting in January, have had to loaf most of the time. Lumberjacks in Canada lost their jobs because there's no snow for log-hauling, and in Nova Scotia, instead of & freeze, came a flood. Robins showed up in Toronto, a grasshopper is reported to have hopped in Ontario and in Penn- sylvania snakes crawled out of their Win- ter beds to greet the Spring—on Janu- ary 14! That same day boys went swimming in Lake Erie; next day snow fell in Los An- geles and rescue cars plowed through the drifts to snowbound settlements in New Mexico. In Boston a woman was over- come by the heat and a few hundred miles out on the Atlantic Ocean liners battled through gales and wrestled with waves 50 feet high Is it possible to resolve this crazy-quilt pattern of effects into any sure system of determinable causes so that we may know what to expect of the weather a reason- able time before it hits us? Dr. Charles G. Abbot, secretary of the Smith- sonian Institution, thinks it is, and he wil tell why. Dr. Abbot's specialty is the sun. For 30-odd years he has been studying it, training up young men at the Smithsonian to study it as Langley trained him, and sending his disciples to far-away mountain tops to record the torrent of its outpouring energy. It is only in cloudless, dustless, elevated places, where the sun’s rays arrive with the minimum of absorption, that these delicate measure- ments of the sclar constant of radiation can be carried on effectively. These studies have convinced Dr. Abbot that the “solar constant” is not constant. The sun is a variable star. He finds its variation re- curring in rhythms, and by means of this reg- ularity he has been able to predict them months in advance. These studies of the solar cycles led him to look for terrestrial cycles also, with the result t he finds an apparent rhythm in the weather corresponding to the rhythm in the sun cess of mous s T is a startling announcement. The discovery may prove to be the mbst revolutionary ad- vance in the w > history of meteorology. ¥or, if the weather the earth recurs in.a pat- tern which re changes in the sun’s radi- aticn, and if > solar nges are predictable month advance, it follows that weather on the eartl “Do y long-range weather fore- casting as a possibility?” I asked Dr. Abbot, meeting him on one of those strange January days when Spring zephyrs lulled the Northeast into drows ence and a snowsterm raged in the surprised Southwest. “I do.” answered the head of the Smith- sonian Institution. “If what we have found turns out to be the real thing, it seems per- missible to hope that weather can be predicted, not only months, but years in advance. And what have the Smithsonian explorers of the sun and the weather found? “For the last 25 years we have been making measurements of the solar radiation at various points on the earth. During the last 12 years, with improved instruments and an exception- ally favorable observing station in Chile, we have made extremely accurate and significant measurements of this energy output which the earth is continually receiving from the sun. Prom s Drawing by H. R. Bishop. By George W. Gray During part of this time we have taken read- ings also on a mountain in South Africa and on Table Mountain in California “The Chilean records are by far the most important of the lot, for it never rains on Mount Montezuma, where our observatory is stationtd, and the skies are clouless 80 per cent of the time, so we are able to make a reading almaost every day. Conditions are not so favorable in California and South Africa, but the readings we have been able to get at these stations confirm the accuracy of the an readings. And these show that the sun does not shine with constant and unvarying radiation, but that it frequently varies, and these changes may amount to as much as 2 per cent wthin a month Dr. Abbot picked up a piece of paper and began to trace a series of curves “Now,” he went on, “if you plot these vari- aticns for consecutive months over a series of years you get a zigzag line that at first sig seems meaningless. But study it a \ and the fluctuations resolve into a pattern of fairly regular waves occupying different lengths of time. I have, through this analysis of the changes in solar energy, traced five differcnt periodicities in the sun “The longest is a period of 68 months—‘that is to say, there is fairly consistcnt prcgressive change in the value of solar radiaticn from a high reading down to a low and then back to a high, which occupies 68 months. Simultaneous with this long periodicity there are shorter ones of 45 months, 25 months, 11 months and 8 m,onths, each representing a discernible rhythm in the sun’s activity. “When I first became aware cf these appar- snt regularities last year I thought it would pe a test of their reality to project them into the future and see if they came around as predicted. So I worked out a forecast. I drew a chart carrying the expected curves through 1931. These predictions of the sun’s behavior were fulfilled within a close approximation.” Next Dr. Abbot thought he would see if there were any comparable periodicities in the weather. He took Weather Bureau reports for the City of Washington for the years 1818 %o 1930, plotted the monthly average temperatures with certain corrections to give the departures which constitute weather (as freed from the average march of events which constitute climate). and analyzed these temperature departure data in the same method used for the solar data. The result was a roughly indi- cated rhythm employing periods of 68, 45, 25, 11 and 6 months. It was not an absolutely identical corr:lation, to be sure. There were some discrepancies. By assuming a sixth period of 18 months the agrzement of the rhythmic pattern with the observed facts was improved. Dr. Abb:t concludes that the solar variations follow five periods, while the weather variations follow six Five of the wcather periodicities correspond to the five solar pericdicities The sixth assumed weather pericdicity, Dr. Abbot sug- gests, may be of terrest 1 origin. “May it not be due to some pecculiarity of Washington sur- roundings which lends a predisposition to a periodicity of 18 months?” In other words, while the solar influences are dcminant in determining the wecather, there are also earth influences, such as land masses, ocean masses, currents, mountains, valleys, polar ice fields, egquatorial heat, and these terrestrial factors mold the weather into local patterns. “Obviously, the periodicities peculiar to a locality will differ from those peculiar to another locality of different surroundings and conditions. These local periodicities can be determined only by study of locai weather records, and it is obvious that no forecasting can be undertak>n until the local periodicities for verious regions and places are ascertained.” A more intensive analysis of Washington weather data, studying both temperatures and barometric pressures, confirmed the earlier conclusions. It was found, almost invariably, that rising solar radiation was followed by one kind of weather in Washington, and falling solar radiation by another. The lag, or time required for the weather to respond to the solar influence, was determined in each case. “Eleven physicists to whom I showed these results,” said Dr. Abbot, “concurred in advising me that the opposition of weather effects following opposite solar sauses shows that a physical connection exists between the weather of Washing- ton and the changes in the solar constant of radiation as observed in Chile. “We have found that a change in the sun’'s radiation of only ei tenths of 1 per cent is followed by temps ure changes in Washington averaging 5 de- grees Fahrenheit. Hence, knowing that the solar radiation may vary far more than this, we may suppose that on many occasions temperature eflects on the earth may reach 10 degrees and some times 15 degrees or 20 degrees, as a I H of sclar changes—that is to 7, major changes in the earth’'s wea r are the effect cf short-period changes in the sun. HTHIS conclusion is so revolution for meteorology,” added the ¢ tist, who is himself a specialist in astr cs, “that I hesitate to publish the unanimous approval T critics encourage me, I am I ported in this view by a e weather records of another »For purposes of comparison I chose Williston, N. Dak., where weather conditions are .in striking contrast to those of Washingten. p here again the same solar periods were reflected, though molded into those characteristics of weather peculiar to the community “It is obvious, of course,” said Dr. Ab- bot, “that in every region local configura- tions mnd conditions mold the solar in- fluences into one form of weather here and into an entirely different form of weather there. Thus, we have warm weather in New York in January, when normally it is cold there, and cold weather in Southern California, where normally it is warm in January T2 know the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of these strange shiftings we shall have to study the rec- ords more—both the weather records of individuad localities and the radiation records of the sun.” I asked Dr. Abbot if he wculd venture a forecast of next month's or next Spring's weather for either Washington or Williston. He declined, though he 1in- dicated that for the purposes of his study he is working on just such searching tests of his thecry. Meanwhile, a large tome is on the press at tiie Government Printing Office—Vol- ume V of the Annals of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory—which will doubtless be an object of scrutiny for many learned investigators. It itemises and summarizes in the exact nomen- clature of mathematics and physics the latest discoveries and conclusions of Dr. Abbot and his half dozen associates who are working with him in this field. The subject is one on which meterologists are extremely eritical. One of the leading meteorologists of Europe, whom Dr. Abbot visited last Summer and to whom he explained his findings, in detail, received the idea very cordially. But at the end of the conference he said, “It can't be true; it’ll fail like all the rest of our thories on the subject.” “But it pramises something,” answered Dr. Abbot. “It's worth a trial.” “Oh, yes, I want to see it tried; it ought to be given a full, fayr trial—but I don’'t expect anything.” And then he added, laughing. “You the weather is so funny it doesn't know itself what it's going to do next.” And yet no scientist seriously admits that the weather is a product of blind chance. like the throw of a dice or the upturn of hecads cor tai's. If the temperature is below zero in Chi- cago and the wind is blowing frcm the north- west, the people in Louisville and Nashville know that thc¢y can count on the arrival of colder we within a few hcurs he ¢ re, but a Chicago cause ville efTect But what z:ro temperature in Chic the wind to blow from the 1en you go fariher northwes temperature of Alberta was even colder t Chicago, and the wind perhaps strenger, yo ve not ¢ ered the question; you have o bushed it farther back The stud] daily weather maps compiled from telegraphed reports from observing tions on the land and from ships at sea (a within recent mecnths, frcm ships in the upper air) has enabled the Weather Bureau to make satisfactory fore ts a day or two in advance. But there is a wide demand for wes: in=- formation a mcnth or six months in advance. Orange growers in Califcrnia would like to know in Octcber if an unpreced:nted freeze is coming in January. Merchants in the E:st would have been at a great advantage if they had known last Summer that the Winter would be warm; then they cculd have planned their stocks and advertising to fit the season. And so with ranchmen, railrcad companies, shippers, flood fighters, ccal producers, etc. One serious handicap under which meteorology has labored is the paucity of records. The study of the weather, and especially any siudy seeking to discover trends and consistent changes, is necessarily statistical,