World weather may be warming up. 27 May 1950. This time it was without going mad. Even climatologists kept their cool.
World weather may be warming up (1950, May 27). The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1931 – 1954), p. 13. Retrieved December 25, 2019, fromhttps://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/248736825?searchTerm=south%20pole%20warming%20up&searchLimits=#
By Dr. EMERY Barks
Mr. A. R. PENFOLD, director of Sydney’s Museum of Technology and Applied Sciences, said
last week that Sydney was becoming hotter, and world weather generally was “taking , a turn for the better.”
“Dr. Julian Huxley’s recent trip to Iceland revealed an enormous shrinking of the Polar pack-ice due to the in creased heat of the sun,”
Mr. Penfold said. “The best sign of change in the lower latitudes is that the East African lakes are drying up.”
Climatologists may want more evidence before concluding that the climate of the southern hemisphere is changing, but over many years scientists have observed a slow warming of the
weather in the northern half of the world.
The temperature rise has speeded up since 1920. Don’t imagine that the thermometer during the past 30 years has risen by whole degrees every year the steady warming-up process can be
expressed only in fractions of degrees. But it has produced important consequences.
Since about 1920 the glaciers in the European Alps have been melting faster.
Iceland has had warmer winters and the immense icefields of Greenland are noticeably shrinking.
In Finland, types of moorland formerly characteristic of the south have gradually extended northwards and certain mosses which need some warmth have spread over large new tracts
of country.
All over Northern Europe, too, the “tree-frontier” (the highest latitude’ at which trees Will grow), is steadily pushing northwards. Birch-trees and conifers are occupying more and more of the hitherto treeless and frozen northern wasteland, the tundra.
Perhaps the British-Norwegian expedition at present in the Antarctic will give the answer for
the Southern Hemisphere, which includes Australia.
Scientists, have also observed great changes in the Arctic oceans.
The area of water infested with drift-ice has diminished and English oceanographers say that the temperature of the North Atlantic has risen, by two or more degrees. Today herrings,
codfish, and haddock live lustily in Arctic waters where they were never found before.
The Russians claim that their scientific methods alone have enabled them to exploit parts of Northern Siberia.
Non – Communist scientists, however, say that Russian economic achievements in the north have nothing to do with special Russian theory and practice.
If the drift-ice had not melted, they say, Soviet ships could not sail on the “top of the world” from Murmansk to Kamchatka, and if temperatures had not risen, agriculture in parts of Northern Siberia would still be impossible.
Americans in Alaska and Canadians in the north-west provinces of Canada have made “con-
quests” similar to those of the Russians in Siberia. But the Americans and Canadians have pushed their frontiers northward with less nationalistic trumpeting and more scientific honesty. They admit that Nature has helped them.
American scientists say that their continent is becoming warmer and drier.
Climatic changes in North America are producing extreme temperatures; hotter and longer
summers, colder and shorter winters.
What causes earth temperatures to rise like this?
No one knows. Some scientists suspect that sunspot activities (gigantic explosions in the
sun) followed by increased radiation of heat may explain the riddle.