Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1875 — What This Cold Means. [ARTICLE]

What This Cold Means.

The science of meteorology is making at least as remarkable progress as any other. The wonderfully-verified predictions of the Signal Service have already become so familiar that they excite no surprise. Prof. Tice, whose very interesting contributions we have published, has demonstrated the possibility of predicting periods of atmospheric disturbance months or even years before they occur. And now comes Dr. Hopper, of the St. Petersburg Physidal Observatory, pointing to the fact that early in the summer of 1874 he predicted, after a series of, most comprehensive observations, taken in various parts of the globe, that there was every reason to expect in 1875 a phenomenally cold year. That his prediction was not a blunder all of us are ready to bear testimony; but the theory upon which it was based is the more interesting because it seems, in some sense, to supplement, and on a broad scale to sustain, the theory of Prof. Tice, that electrical qurrents control to a great extent the atmospheric phenomena. It is not a new idea that certain changes in the spots of the sun, which occur periodically, are associated with periodic maxima in the range of the magnetic needle. Prof. Loomis, in his work published in 1868, paints out the fact that observations “ extending back nearly a century indicate a maximum in the range of the magnetic needle every ten or twelve years,” which corresponds with the relative frequency of solar spots, and of auroras, and that these maxima themselves exhibit a further periodicity, with intervals of fifty-eight to sixty years, at which the greatest variations of the needle and the most frequent auroras occur. The first of these periods corresponds to our revolution of Jupiter, and the second to five revolutions of Jupiter and two of Saturn. Prof. Loomis supposes that electric currents around the sun are affected by the position of the planets, and in turn afiect and disturb the electric currents around the earth. Now, Dr. Kopper finds ttiat in the mean annual temperatures of each zone there are indeed eleven-year periods of maximum and minimum; that under the tropics the maximum heat occurs about a year before the maximum of sun spots, but north of the tropics about two or three years after the maximum of spots. Alsq, he finds that the period of time between the minimumand succeeding maximum of spots is shorter than the period between the maximum and succeeding minimum, and that the extremes of heat and cold follow a similar law. This, indeed, is shown by Loomis’ elaborate tables. The ancients were not so far wrong, then, in gazing at the stars and trying to foretell future events from their motions. If the periods of Jupiter and Saturn affect the electric condition of the sun, and if the sun’s condition governs the electric currents of the earth, and thus produces, according to Dr. Kopper, extremes of temperature, and according to Prof. Tice vast maelstroms of polar air and violent atmospheric and electric perturbations, it may not be long before science will snatch their secrets from the starry heavens and foretell the weather with the same minuteness and certainty with which it now predicts eclipses and the movements of comets. — St. Louis Democrat.