are carefully examined, from the time when they were first kept, which in a few cases goes back about 150 years, there is found no good evidence of any progressive change in temperature, or in the amount of rain and snow. Even when the most accurate instrumental records are available, care must be taken to interpret them correctly. Thus, if a rainfall or snowfall record of several years at some station indicates an apparent increase or decrease in the amount of precipitation, it does not necessarily follow that this means a permanent, progressive change in climate, which is to continue indefinitely. It may simply mean that there have been a few years of somewhat more precipitation, and that a period of somewhat less precipitation is to follow.
Value of Evidence concerning Changes of Climate.—The body of facts which has been adduced as evidence of progressive changes of climate within historical times is not yet sufficiently large and complete to warrant any general correlation and study of these facts as a whole. But there are certain considerations which should be borne in mind in dealing with this evidence before any conclusions are reached. In the first place, changes in the distribution of certain fruits and cereals, and in the dates of the harvest, have often been accepted as undoubted evidence of changes in climate. Such a conclusion is by no means inevitable, for many changes in the districts of cultivation of various crops have naturally resulted from the fact that these same crops are in time found to be more profitably grown, or more easily prepared for market, in another locality. In France, C. A. Angot has made a careful compilation of the dates of the vintage from the 14th century down to the present time, and finds no support for the view so commonly held there that the climate has changed for the worse. At the present time, the average date of the grape harvest in Aubonne is exactly the same as at the close of the 16th century. After a careful study of the conditions of the date tree, from the 4th century, B.C., D. Eginitis concludes that the climate of the eastern portion of the Mediterranean basin has not changed appreciably during twenty-three centuries.
Secondly, a good many of the reports by explorers from little-known regions are contradictory. This shows the need of caution in jumping at conclusions of climatic change. An increased use of water for irrigation may cause the level of water in a lake to fall. Periodic oscillations, giving higher and then lower water, do not indicate progressive change in one direction. Many writers have seen a law in what was really a chance coincidence.
Thirdly, where a progressive desiccation seems to have taken place, it is often a question whether less rain is actually falling, or whether the inhabitants have less capacity and less energy than formerly. Is the change from a once cultivated area to a barren expanse the result of decreasing rainfall, or of the emigration of the former inhabitants to other lands? The difference between a country formerly well irrigated and fertile, and a present-day sandy, inhospitable waste may be the result of a former compulsion of the people, by a strong governing power, to till the soil and to irrigate, while now, without that compulsion, no attempt is made to keep up the work. A region of deficient rainfall, once thickly settled and prosperous, may readily become an apparently hopeless desert, even without the intervention of war and pestilence, if man allows the climate to master him. In many cases the reports of increasing dryness really concern only the decrease in the water supply from rivers and springs, and it is well known that a change in the cultivation of the soil, or in the extent of the forests, may bring about marked changes in the flow of springs and rivers without any essential change in the actual amount of rainfall.
Lastly, a region whose normal rainfall is at best barely sufficient for man’s needs may be abandoned by its inhabitants during a few years of deficient precipitation, and not again occupied even when, a few years later, normal or excessive rainfall occurs.
Periodic Oscillations of Climate: Sun-spot Period.—The discovery of a distinct eleven-year periodicity in the magnetic phenomena of the earth naturally led to investigations of similar periods in meteorology. The literature on this subject has assumed large proportions. The results, however, have not been satisfactory. The problem is difficult and obscure. Fluctuations in temperature and rainfall, occurring in an eleven-year period, have been made out for certain stations but the variations are slight, and it is not yet clear that they are sufficiently marked, uniform and persistent over large areas to make practical application of the periodicity in forecasting possible. In some cases the relation to sun-spot periodicity is open to debate; in others, the results are contradictory.
W. P. Köppen has brought forward evidence of a sun-spot period in the mean annual temperature, especially in the tropics, the maximum temperatures coming in the years of sun-spot minima. The whole amplitude of the variation in the mean annual temperatures, from sun-spot minimum to sun-spot maximum, is, however, only 1·3° in the tropics and a little less than 1° in the extra-tropics. More recently Nordmann (for the years 1870–1900) has continued Köppen’s investigation.
In 1872 C. Meldrum, then Director of the Meteorological Observatory at Mauritius, first called attention to a sun-spot periodicity in rainfall and in the frequency of tropical cyclones in the South Indian Ocean. The latter are most numerous in years of sun-spot maxima, and decrease in frequency with the approach of sun-spot minima. Poëy found later a similar relation in the case of the West Indian hurricanes. Meldrum’s conclusions regarding rainfall were that, with few exceptions, there is more rain in years of sun-spot maxima. S. A. Hill found it to be true of the Indian summer monsoon rains that there seems to be an excess in the first half of the cycle, after the sun-spot maximum. The winter rains of northern India, however, show the opposite relation; the minimum following, or coinciding with, the sun-spot maximum. Particular attention has been paid to the sun-spot cycle of rainfall in India, because of the close relation between famines and the summer monsoon rainfall in that country. Sir Norman Lockyer and Dr W. J. S. Lockyer have recently studied the variations of rainfall in the region surrounding the Indian Ocean in the light of solar changes in temperature. They find that India has two pulses of rainfall, one near the maximum and the other near the minimum of the sun-spot period. The famines of the last fifty years have occurred in the intervals between these two pulses, and these writers believe that if as much had been known in 1836 as is now known, the probability of famines at all the subsequent dates might have been foreseen.
Relations between the sun-spot period and various other meteorological phenomena than temperature, rainfall and tropical cyclones have been made the subject of numerous investigations, but on the whole the results are still too uncertain to be of any but a theoretical value. Some promising conclusions seem, however, to have been reached in regard to pressure variations, and their control over other climatic elements.
Brückner’s 35-Year Cycle.—Of more importance than the results thus far reached for the sun-spot period are those which clearly establish a somewhat longer period of slight fluctuations or oscillations of climate, known as the Brückner cycle, after Professor Brückner of Bern, who has made a careful investigation of the whole subject of climatic changes and finds evidence of a 35-year periodicity in temperature and rainfall. In a cycle whose average length is 35 years, there comes a series of years which are somewhat cooler and also more rainy, and then a series of years which are somewhat warmer and drier. The interval in some cases is twenty years; in others it is fifty. The average interval between two cool and moist, or warm and dry, periods is about 35 years. The mean amplitude of the temperature fluctuation, based on large numbers of data, is a little less than 2°. The fluctuations in rainfall are more marked in interiors than on coasts. The general mean amplitude is 12%, or, excluding exceptional districts, 24%. Regions whose normal rainfall is small are most affected.
The following table shows the dates and characters of Brückner’s periods:—
| Warm | 1746–1755 | 1791–1805 | 1821–1835 | 1851–1870 | .. |
| Dry | 1756–1770 | 1781–1805 | 1826–1840 | 1856–1870 | .. |
| Cold | 1731–1745 | 1756–1790 | 1806–1820 | 1836–1850 | 1871–1885 |
| Wet | 1736–1755 | 1771–1780 | 1806–1825 | 1841–1855 | 1871–1885 |
