Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/465

Rh different parts of the earth, especially of the United States, that there is a definite though complicated synchronism, which connects the variations of the solar action with the variation in the terrestrial climatic effects. This is a large subject which can not be properly undertaken in this lecture. It may be said in general that as the sun gets more energetic in some parts of its period, the temperatures in the earth's tropics are higher, and simultaneously in the temperate zones they are lower. At the same time the barometric pressures in the atmosphere of the earth centered around the Indian Ocean are higher, while in North and South America they are lower. In the Pacific states the temperatures increase with the solar energy, and in the central and eastern states they decrease. The solar impulse which produces these effects tends to precede the terrestrial exhibit which depends upon the solar impulse by some months, possibly by a year under certain conditions, and this anticipation of course promises an opportunity to develop what may become a rational ground for a seasonal forecast for terrestrial weather. The entire field of operations is very complicated, the circulation in both atmospheres tends to mask and make more complex the pure variation of the solar radiation, so that we must be very cautious in attempting to pronounce for or against certain tentative conclusions regarding this subject. It will probably require more than one generation of men to make practicable and popularize the result of this research. Mathematicians as well as laymen are cautioned to withhold negative evidence based upon half understood phenomena, because it is in fact very difficult to disentangle the net which nature has spread before us. The threads should not be torn and distorted by the bungling hands of those who have not the training required to unravel the several skeins which lead to the center of the great mesh. It is certainly not saying too much to assert that there is good ground for proceeding positively and firmly along this line of research, and the fact that it has attracted the attention of many commissions, international committees, scientific societies, observatories and institutions shows to what an extent the great problem has already commended itself to the favor of scientific men.