Source: Ovens and Murray Advertiser
URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/202341000
Date: 06/07/1901
Event: US heat wave: "the intensity of which exceeds the highest temperature yet recorded in that country"
Credit: Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Trove (National Library of Australia)
OVENS AND MURRAY ADVERTISER - JUL 6, 1901
CLIMATIC VARIATIONS
The intense heat prevailing at New York and other towns in the United States of America is a forcible reminder that the system of atmospheric disturbances is still but very imperfectly understood. Elaborate observations have been provided for in nearly every civilised country, and yet it has been found impossible to prognosticate the weather with any certainty for more than twenty-four hours. Still less possible has it been found to anticipate the remarkable alternations of heat and cold which occasionally prevail, and of which the origin remains as unknown as it was hundreds of years ago.
Here in Australia, while we are suffering under the rigors of an abnormally severe winter, our American cousins are sweltering under the influence of a heat wave, the intensity of which exceeds the highest temperature yet recorded in that country. We read of the thermometer having reached 103 degrees, a temperature nothing unusual in some parts of Australia, even in Victoria, but extraordinary in the northern parts of the United States. Such fluctuations serve to discredit any theories that have been put forward as to a gradual change of temperature in the northern hemisphere where historical records date back for nearly two thousand years.
It has been a favorite idea with scientists that Europe, and, of course, North America, have been gradually growing colder, and that the whole of the northern parts of that hemisphere will at some distant period be again covered with a thick mantle of ice, as it has been proved was the case in what is termed the Glacial era, thus blotting out the high state of civilisation which now exists in those regions. There is no doubt there have been some severe winters in Europe and North America in recent years, even the sea around the British Islands having been frozen for some miles around the shores, and effectually blocking all navigation, while what are known as "blizzards" in America have raged with terrible fury and great loss of human and animal life.
But ancient records in Europe show that such visitations were not uncommon in ancient times, even the Baltic and Black Seas being frozen, and admitting of the passage of heavy vehicles and facilitating the passage of rivers by hostile armies with their full complement of horse, foot, and artillery. On the contrary, there were instances in Europe in past centuries of periods of excessive heat, when some of the large rivers, such as the Rhine and the Rhone, were reduced to chains of water-holes, as is often the case in Australia, and even in recent summers forest fires have devastated large areas. In fact, the experience of man in the northern hemisphere, as far back as records can be relied upon, goes to show that there has been no considerable increase of heat or cold in at least the last two thousand years, and that the same extraordinary fluctuations of temperature occurred in the past as now.
Scientists, therefore, have to look further for some cause for such variations, and a favorite theory is that the atmosphere of our planet is affected by the increase or decrease of the spots on the sun, which are held to denote extraordinary disturbances in the gaseous envelope of that body.
It is rather curious that while the northern hemisphere is subject to these deadly extremes of temperature, the southern does not appear to be similarly affected. A heat wave may affect part of this continent for a few days, but its effects have never been so fearfully destructive of human life as in America, and the winters, though severe in elevated districts, are merely felt as a pleasant alternation to the oppressive heat of summer. Indeed we seem to be blessed with a climate admirably suited to the development of a virile and energetic people, and thus while commiserating the climatic afflictions of our northern brethren, the comparison should make us all the more thankful for the pleasant and salubrious climate which, as a rule, we generally enjoy.