Author Description

Product description This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt:...be due to heat. In this and other respects it agrees with what would be expected from an electrical phenomenon. A summary of the investigation here mentioned will be published shortly. the greut disturbances of hurricanes and of the ordinary storms of the Temperate Zone. Let us see how far the observed facts as to such cyclonic movements agree with what would be expected on the basis of the ordinary hypothesis of thermal activity. To begin with tropical thunderstorms and showers, the relation of these to suu spots, so far as the author is aware, has not been Investigated by the method of making maps of the departures from the normal at different stages of the solar cycle--the method which has given such-convincing results along other lines at the hands of Arctowski, Hildebrandsson, Kullmer, and others. There are indications, however, that the average rainfall of the Torrid Zone as a whole is greater at times of many spots than of few (13). Judging from regions that have been more minutely investigated it is probable that different parts of the zone may respond differently, as is clearly the case in the Temperate Zone. This would not affect the general conclusion that the total amount of convective activity which gives rise to equatorial showers varies in harmony with the sun-spots. Increased insolation apparently causes a heating of the lower layers of the atmosphere and this in turn causes more rapid upward movements such as occur in tropical thundershowers. A single tropical hurricane or one of the widespreadlng cyclonic storms of the Temperate Zone carries upward far more air than do scores or hundreds of thunderstorms. Since without the sun there would be none of the present Irregular areas of permanent high and low pressure, It seems on