Climatic Changes Part 12

An interesting practical application of some of the preceding generalizations is found in an attempt by C. E. P. Brooks[95] to interpret post-glacial climatic changes almost entirely in terms of crustal movement. We believe that he carries the matter much too far, but his discussion is worthy of rather full recapitulation, not only for its theoretical value but because it gives a good summary of post-glacial changes. His climatic table for northwest Europe as reprinted from the annual report of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution for 1917, p. 366, is as follows:

_Phase_ _Climate_ _Date_

1. The Last Great Arctic climate. 30,000-18,000 B. C.

Glaciation.

2. The Retreat of the Severe continental 18,000-6000 B. C.

Glaciers. climate.

3. The Continental Phase. Continental climate. 6000-4000 B. C.

4. The Maritime Phase. Warm and moist. 4000-3000 B. C.

5. The Later Forest Phase. Warm and dry. 3000-1800 B. C.

6. The Peat-Bog Phase. Cooler and moister. 1800 B. C.-300 A. D.

7. The Recent Phase. Becoming drier. 300 A. D.-

Brooks bases his chronology largely on De Geer's measurements of the annual layers of clay in lake bottoms but makes much use of other evidence. According to Brooks the last glacial epoch lasted roughly from 30,000 to 18,000 B. C., but this includes a slight amelioration of climate followed by a readvance of the ice, known as the Buhl stage.

During the time of maximum glaciation the British Isles stood twenty or thirty feet higher than now and Scandinavia was "considerably" more elevated. The author believes that this caused a fall of 1C. in the temperature of the British Isles and of 2C. in Scandinavia. By an ingenious though not wholly convincing method of calculation he concludes that this lowering of temperature, aided by an increase in the area of the lands, sufficed to start an ice sheet in Scandinavia. The relatively small area of ice cooled the air and gave rise to an area of high barometric pressure. This in turn is supposed to have caused further expansion of the ice and to have led to full-fledged glaciation.

About 18,000 B. C. the retreat of the ice began in good earnest. Even though no evidence has yet been found, Brooks believes there must have been a change in the distribution of land and sea to account for the diminution of the ice. The ensuing millenniums formed the Magdalenian period in human history, the last stage of the Paleolithic, when man lived in caves and reindeer were abundant in central Europe.[96] At first the ice retreated very slowly and there were periods when for scores of years the ice edge remained stationary or even readvanced.

About 10,000 B. C. the edge of the ice lay along the southern coast of Sweden. During the next 2000 years it withdrew more rapidly to about 59N. Then came the Fennoscandian pause, or Gschnitz stage, when for about 200 years the ice edge remained in one position, forming a great moraine. Brooks suggests that this pause about 8000 B. C. was due to the closing of the connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea and the synchronous opening of a connection between the Baltic and the White Seas, whereby cold Arctic waters replaced the warmer Atlantic waters. He notes, however, that about 7500 B. C. the obliquity of the ecliptic was probably nearly 1 greater than at present. This he calculates to have caused the climate of Germany and Sweden to be 1F.

colder than at present in winter and 1F. warmer in summer.

The next climatic stage was marked by a rise of temperature till about 6000 B. C. During this period the ice at first retreated, presumably because the climate was ameliorating, although no cause of such amelioration is a.s.signed. At length the ice lay far enough north to allow a connection between the Baltic and the Atlantic by way of Lakes Wener and Wetter in southern Sweden. This is supposed to have warmed the Baltic Sea and to have caused the climate to become distinctly milder.

Next the land rose once more so that the Baltic was separated from the Atlantic and was converted into the Ancylus lake of fresh water. The southwest Baltic region then stood 400 feet higher than now. The result was the Daun stage, about 5000 B. C., when the ice halted or perhaps readvanced a little, its front being then near Ragunda in about lat.i.tude 63. Why such an elevation did not cause renewed glaciation instead of merely the slight Daun pause, Brooks does not explain, although his calculations as to the effect of a slight elevation of the land during the main period of glaciation from 30,000 to 18,000 B. C. would seem to demand a marked readvance.

After 5000 B. C. there ensued a period when the climate, although still distinctly continental, was relatively mild. The winters, to be sure, were still cold but the summers were increasingly warm. In Sweden, for example, the types of vegetation indicate that the summer temperature was 7F. higher than now. Storms, Brooks a.s.sumes, were comparatively rare except on the outer fringe of Great Britain. There they were sufficiently abundant so that in the Northwest they gave rise to the first Peat-Bog period, during which swamps replaced forests of birch and pine. Southern and eastern England, however, probably had a dry continental climate. Even in northwest Norway storms were rare as is indicated by remains of forests on islands now barren because of the strong winds and fierce storms. Farther east most parts of central and northern Europe were relatively dry. This was the early Neolithic period when man advanced from the use of unpolished to polished stone implements.

Not far from 4000 B. C. the period of continental climate was replaced by a comparatively moist maritime climate. Brooks believes that this was because submergence opened the mouth of the Baltic and caused the fresh Ancylus lake to give place to the so-called Litorina sea. The temperature in Sweden averaged about 3F. higher than at present and in southwestern Norway 2. More important than this was the small annual range of temperature due to the fact that the summers were cool while the winters were mild. Because of the presence of a large expanse of water in the Baltic region, storms, as our author states, then crossed Great Britain and followed the Baltic depression, carrying the moisture far inland. In spite of the additional moisture thus available the snow line in southern Norway was higher than now.

At this point Brooks turns to other parts of the world. He states that not far from 4000 B. C., a submergence of the lands, rarely amounting to more than twenty-five feet, took place not only in the Baltic region but in Ireland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, and other parts of the Arctic Ocean, as well as in the White Sea, Greenland, and the eastern part of North America. Evidences of a mild climate are found in all those places.

Similar evidence of a mild warm climate is found in East Africa, East Australia, Tierra del Fuego, and Antarctica. The dates are not established with certainty but they at least fall in the period immediately preceding the present epoch. In explanation of these conditions Brooks a.s.sumes a universal change of sea level. He suggests with some hesitation that this may have been due to one of Pettersson's periods of maximum "tide-generating force." According to Pettersson the varying positions of the moon, earth, and sun cause the tides to vary in cycles of about 9, 90, and 1800 years, though the length of the periods is not constant. When tides are high there is great movement of ocean waters and hence a great mixture of the water at different lat.i.tudes.

This is supposed to cause an amelioration of climate. The periods of maximum and minimum tide-generating force are as follows:

Maxima 3500 B. C.--------2100 B. C.--------350 B. C.-------A. D. 1434 Minima ---------2800 B. C.--------1200 B. C.-------A. D. 530---------

Brooks thinks that the big trees in California and the Norse sagas and Germanic myths indicate a rough agreement of climatic phenomena with Pettersson's last three dates, while the mild climate of 4000 B. C. may really belong to 3500 B. C. He gives no evidence confirming Pettersson's view at the other three dates.

To return to Brooks' sketch of the relation of climatic pulsations to the alt.i.tude of the lands, by 3000 B. C., that is, toward the close of the Neolithic period, further elevation is supposed to have taken place over the central lat.i.tudes of western Europe. Southern Britain, which had remained constantly above its present level ever since 30,000 B. C., was perhaps ninety feet higher than now. Ireland was somewhat enlarged by elevation, the Straits of Dover were almost closed, and parts of the present North Sea were land. To these conditions Brooks ascribes the prevalence of a dry continental climate. The storms s.h.i.+fted northward once more, the winds were mild, as seems to be proved by remains of trees in exposed places; and forests replaced fields of peat and heath in Britain and Germany. The summers were perhaps warmer than now but the winters were severe. The relatively dry climate prevailed as far west as Ireland. For example, in Drumkelin Bog in Donegal County a corded oak road and a two-story log cabin appear to belong to this time. Fourteen feet of bog lie below the floor and twenty-six above. This period, perhaps 3000-2000 B. C., was the legendary heroic age of Ireland when "the vigour of the Irish reached a level not since attained." This, as Brooks points out, may have been a result of the relatively dry climate, for today the extreme moisture of Ireland seems to be a distinct handicap. In Scandinavia, civilization, or at least the stage of relative progress, was also high at this time.

By 1600 B. C. the land had a.s.sumed nearly its present level in the British Isles and the southern Baltic region, while northern Scandinavia still stood lower than now. The climate of Britain and Germany was so humid that there was an extensive formation of peat even on high ground not before covered. This moist stage seems to have lasted almost to the time of Christ, and may have been the reason why the Romans described Britain as peculiarly wet and damp. At this point Brooks again departs from northwest Europe to a wider field:

It is possible that we have to attribute this damp period in Northwest Europe to some more general cause, for Ellsworth Huntington's curves of tree-growth in California and climate in Western Asia both show moister conditions from about 1000 B. C. to A. D. 200, and the same author believes that the Mediterranean lands had a heavier rainfall about 500 B. C. to A. D. 200. It seems that the phase was marked by a general increase of the storminess of the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere at least, with a maximum between Ireland and North Germany, indicating probably that the Baltic again became the favourite track of depressions from the Atlantic.

Brooks ends his paper with a brief resume of glacial changes in North America, but as the means of dating events are unreliable the degree of synchronism with Europe is not clear. He sums up his conclusions as follows:

On the whole it appears that though there is a general similarity in the climatic history of the two sides of the North Atlantic, the changes are not really contemporaneous, and such relations.h.i.+p as appears is due mainly to the natural similarity in the geographical history of two regions both recovering from an Ice Age, and only very partially to world-wide pulsations of climate. Additional evidence on this head will be available when Baron de Geer publishes the results of his recent investigations of the seasonal glacial clays of North America, especially if, as he hopes, he is able to correlate the banding of these clays with the growth-rings of the big trees.

When we turn to the northwest of North America, this is brought out very markedly. For in Yukon and Alaska the Ice Age was a very mild affair compared with its severity in eastern America and Scandinavia. As the land had not a heavy ice-load to recover from, there were no complicated geographical changes. Also, there were no fluctuations of climate, but simply a gradual pa.s.sage to present conditions. The latter circ.u.mstance especially seems to show that the emphasis laid on geographical rather than astronomical factors of _great_ climatic changes is not misplaced.

Brooks' painstaking discussion of post-glacial climatic changes is of great value because of the large body of material which he has so carefully wrought together. His strong belief in the importance of changes in the level of the lands deserves serious consideration. It is difficult, however, to accept his final conclusion that such changes are the main factors in recent climatic changes. It is almost impossible, for example, to believe that movements of the land could produce almost the same series of climatic changes in Europe, Central Asia, the western and eastern parts of North America, and the southern hemisphere. Yet such changes appear to have occurred during and since the glacial period. Again there is no evidence whatever that movements of the land have anything to do with the historic cycles of climate or with the cycles of weather in our own day, which seem to be the same as glacial cycles on a small scale. Also, as Dr. Simpson points out in discussing Brooks' paper, there appears "no solution along these lines of the problem connected with rich vegetation in both polar circles and the ice-age which produced the ice-sheet at sea-level in Northern India."

Nevertheless, we may well believe that Brooks is right in holding that changes in the relative level and relative area of land and sea have had important local effects. While they are only one of the factors involved in climatic changes, they are certainly one that must constantly be kept in mind.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 95: C. E. P. Brooks: The Evolution of Climate in Northwest Europe. Quart. Jour. Royal Meteorol. Soc., Vol. 47, 1921, pp. 173-194.]

[Footnote 96: H. F. Osborn: Men of the Old Stone Age, N. Y., 1915; J. M.

Tyler: The New Stone Age in Northwestern Europe, N. Y., 1920.]

CHAPTER XIII

THE CHANGING COMPOSITION OF OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE

Having discussed the climatic effect of movements of the earth's crust during the course of geological time, we are now ready to consider the corresponding effects due to changes in the movable envelopes--the oceans and the atmosphere. Variations in the composition of sea water and of air and in the amount of air must almost certainly have occurred, and must have produced at least slight climatic consequences. It should be pointed out at once that such variations appear to be far less important climatically than do movements of the earth's crust and changes in the activity of the sun. Moreover, in most cases, they are not reversible as are the crustal and solar phenomena. Hence, while most of them appear to have been unimportant so far as climatic oscillations and fluctuations are concerned, they seemingly have aided in producing the slight secular progression to which we have so often referred.

There is general agreement among geologists that the ocean has become increasingly saline throughout the ages. Indeed, calculations of the rate of acc.u.mulation of salt have been a favorite method of arriving at estimates of the age of the ocean, and hence of the earliest marine sediments. So far as known, however, no geologist or climatologist has discussed the probable climatic effects of increased salinity. Yet it seems clear that an increase in salinity must have a slight effect upon climate.

Salinity affects climate in four ways: (1) It appreciably influences the rate of evaporation; (2) it alters the freezing point; (3) it produces certain indirect effects through changes in the absorption of carbon dioxide; and (4) it has an effect on oceanic circulation.

(1) According to the experiments of Mazelle and Okada, as reported by Krummel,[97] evaporation from ordinary sea water is from 9 to 30 per cent less rapid than from fresh water under similar conditions. The variation from 9 to 30 per cent found in the experiments depends, perhaps, upon the wind velocity. When salt water is stagnant, rapid evaporation tends to result in the development of a film of salt on the top of the water, especially where it is sheltered from the wind. Such a film necessarily reduces evaporation. Hence the relatively low salinity of the oceans in the past probably had a tendency to increase the amount of water vapor in the air. Even a little water vapor augments slightly the blanketing effect of the air and to that extent diminishes the diurnal and seasonal range of temperature and the contrast from zone to zone.

(2) Increased salinity means a lower freezing temperature of the oceans and hence would have an effect during cold periods such as the present and the Pleistocene ice age. It would not, however, be of importance during the long warm periods which form most of geologic time. A salinity of about 3.5 per cent at present lowers the freezing point of the ocean roughly 2C. below that of fresh water. If the ocean were fresh and our winters as cold as now, all the harbors of New England and the Middle Atlantic States would be icebound. The Baltic Sea would also be frozen each winter, and even the eastern harbors of the British Isles would be frequently locked in ice. At high lat.i.tudes the area of permanently frozen oceans would be much enlarged. The effect of such a condition upon marine life in high lat.i.tudes would be like that of a change to a warmer climate. It would protect the life on the continental shelf from the severe battering of winter storms. It would also lessen the severity of the winter temperature in the water for when water freezes it gives up much latent heat,--eighty calories per cubic centimeter. Part of this raises the temperature of the underlying water.

The expansion of the ice near northern sh.o.r.es would influence the life of the lands quite differently from that of the oceans. It would act like an addition of land to the continents and would, therefore, increase the atmospheric contrasts from zone to zone and from continental interior to ocean. In summer the ice upon the sea would tend to keep the coastal lands cool, very much as happens now near the Arctic Ocean, where the ice floes have a great effect through their reflection of light and their absorption of heat in melting. In winter the virtual enlargement of the continents by the addition of an ice fringe would decrease the snowfall upon the lands. Still more important would be the effect in intensifying the anti-cyclonic conditions which normally prevail in winter not only over continents but over ice-covered oceans.

Hence the outblowing cold winds would he strengthened.[98] The net effect of all these conditions would apparently be a diminution of snowfall in high lat.i.tudes upon the lands even though the summer snowfall upon the ocean and the coasts may have increased. This condition may have been one reason why widespread glaciation does not appear to have prevailed in high lat.i.tudes during the Proterozoic and Permian glaciations, even though it occurred farther south. If the ocean during those early glacial epochs were ice-covered down to middle lat.i.tudes, a lack of extensive glaciation in high lat.i.tudes would be no more surprising than is the lack of Pleistocene glaciation in the northern parts of Alaska and Asia. Great ice sheets are impossible without a large supply of moisture.

(3) Among the indirect effects of salinity one of the chief appears to be that the low salinity of the water in the past and the greater ease with which it froze presumably allowed the temperature of the entire ocean to be slightly higher than now. This is because ice serves as a blanket and hinders the radiation of heat from the underlying water. The temperature of the ocean has a climatic significance not only directly, but indirectly through its influence on the amount of carbon dioxide held by the oceans. A change of even 1C. from the present mean temperature of 2C. would alter the ability of the entire ocean to absorb carbon dioxide by about 4 per cent. This, according to F. W.

Clarke,[99] is because the oceans contain from eighteen to twenty-seven times as much carbon dioxide as the air when only the free carbon dioxide is considered, and about seventy times as much according to Johnson and Williamson[100] when the partially combined carbon dioxide is also considered. Moreover, the capacity of water for carbon dioxide varies sharply with the temperature.[101] Hence a rise in temperature of only 1C. would theoretically cause the oceans to give up from 30 to 280 times as much carbon dioxide as the air now holds. This, however, is on the unfounded a.s.sumption that the oceans are completely saturated. The important point is merely that a slight change in ocean temperature would cause a disproportionately large change in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air with all that this implies in respect to blanketing the earth, and thus altering temperature.

(4) Another and perhaps the most important effect of salinity upon climate depends upon the rapidity of the deep-sea circulation. The circulation is induced by differences of temperature, but its speed is affected at least slightly by salinity. The vertical circulation is now dominated by cold water from subpolar lat.i.tudes. Except in closed seas like the Mediterranean the lower portions of the ocean are near the freezing point. This is because cold water sinks in high lat.i.tudes by reason of its superior density, and then "creeps" to low lat.i.tudes.

There it finally rises and replaces either the water driven poleward by the winds, or that which has evaporated from the Surface.[102]

During past ages, when the sea water was less salty, the circulation was presumably more rapid than now. This was because, in tropical regions, the rise of cold water is hindered by the sinking of warm surface water which is relatively dense because evaporation has removed part of the water and caused an acc.u.mulation of salt. According to Krummel and Mill,[103] the surface salinity of the subtropical belt of the North Atlantic commonly exceeds 3.7 per cent and sometimes reaches 3.77 per cent, whereas the underlying waters have a salinity of less than 3.5 per cent and locally as little as 3.44 per cent. The other oceans are slightly less saline than the North Atlantic at all depths, but the vertical salinity gradients along the tropics are similar. According to the Smithsonian Physical Tables, the difference in salinity between the surface water and that lying below is equivalent to a difference of .003 in density, where the density of fresh water is taken as 1.000. Since the decrease in density produced by warming water from the temperature of its greatest density (4C.) to the highest temperatures which ever prevail in the ocean (30C. or 86F.) is only .004, the more saline surface waters of the dry tropics are at most times almost as dense as the less saline but colder waters beneath the surface, which have come from higher lat.i.tudes. During days of especially great evaporation, however, the most saline portions of the surface waters in the dry tropics are denser than the underlying waters and therefore sink, and produce a temporary local stagnation in the general circulation. Such a sinking of the warm surface waters is reported by Krummel, who detected it by means of the rise in temperature which it produces at considerable depths. If such a hindrance to the circulation did not exist, the velocity of the deep-sea movements would be greater.

If in earlier times a more rapid circulation occurred, low lat.i.tudes must have been cooled more than now by the rise of cold waters. At the same time higher lat.i.tudes were presumably warmed by a greater flow of warm water from tropical regions because less of the surface heat sank in low lat.i.tudes. Such conditions would tend to lessen the climatic contrast between the different lat.i.tudes. Hence, in so far as the rate of deep-sea circulation depends upon salinity, the slowly increasing amount of salt in the oceans must have tended to increase the contrasts between low and high lat.i.tudes. Thus for several reasons, the increase of salinity during geologic history seems to deserve a place among the minor agencies which help to explain the apparent tendency toward a secular progression of climate in the direction of greater contrasts between tropical and subpolar lat.i.tudes.

Changes in the composition and amount of the atmosphere have presumably had a climatic importance greater than that of changes in the salinity of the oceans. The atmospheric changes may have been either progressive or cyclic, or both. In early times, according to the nebular hypothesis, the atmosphere was much more dense than now and contained a larger percentage of certain const.i.tuents, notably carbon dioxide and water.

The planetesimal hypothesis, on the other hand, postulates an increase in the density of the atmosphere, for according to this hypothesis the density of the atmosphere depends upon the power of the earth to hold gases, and this power increases as the earth grows bigger with the infall of material from without.[104]

Whichever hypothesis may be correct, it seems probable that when life first appeared on the land the atmosphere resembled that of today in certain fundamental respects. It contained the elements essential to life, and its blanketing effect was such as to maintain temperatures not greatly different from those of the present. The evidence of this depends largely upon the narrow limits of temperature within which the activities of modern life are possible, and upon the c.u.mulative evidence that ancient life was essentially similar to the types now living. The resemblance between some of the oldest forms and those of today is striking. For example, according to Professor Schuchert:[105] "Many of the living genera of forest trees had their origin in the Cretaceous, and the giant sequoias of California go back to the Tria.s.sic, while Ginkgo is known in the Permian. Some of the fresh-water molluscs certainly were living in the early periods of the Mesozoic, and the lung-fish of today (Ceratodus) is known as far back as the Tria.s.sic and is not very unlike other lung-fishes of the Devonian. The higher vertebrates and insects, on the other hand, are very sensitive to their environment, and therefore do not extend back generically beyond the Cenozoic, and only in a few instances even as far as the Oligocene. Of marine invertebrates the story is very different, for it is well known that the horseshoe crab (Limulus) lived in the Upper Jura.s.sic, and Nautilus in the Tria.s.sic, with forms in the Devonian not far removed from this genus. Still longer-ranging genera occur among the brachiopods, for living Lingula and Crania have specific representatives as far back as the early Ordovician. Among living foraminifers, Lagena, Globigerina, and Nodosaria are known in the later Cambrian or early Ordovician. In the Middle Cambrian near Field, British Columbia, Walcott has found a most varied array of invertebrates among which are crustaceans not far removed from living forms. Zoologists who see these wonderful fossils are at once struck with their modernity and the little change that has taken place in certain stocks since that far remote time. Back of the Paleozoic, little can be said of life from the generic standpoint, since so few fossils have been recovered, but what is at hand suggests that the marine environment was similar to that of today."

At present, as we have repeatedly seen, little growth takes place either among animals or plants at temperatures below 0C. or above 40C., and for most species the limiting temperatures are about 10 and 30. The maintenance of so narrow a scale of temperature is a function of the atmosphere, as well as of the sun. Without an atmosphere, the temperature by day would mount fatally wherever the sun rides high in the sky. By night it would fall everywhere to a temperature approaching absolute zero, that is -273C. Some such temperature prevails a few miles above the earth's surface, beyond the effective atmosphere.

Indeed, even if the atmosphere were almost as it is now, but only lacked one of the minor const.i.tuents, a const.i.tuent which is often actually ignored in statements of the composition of the air, life would be impossible. Tyndall concludes that if water vapor were entirely removed from the atmosphere for a single day and night, all life--except that which is dormant in the form of seeds, eggs, or spores--would be exterminated. Part would be killed by the high temperature developed by day when the sun was high, and part, by the cold night.

The testimony of ancient glaciation as to the slight difference in the climate and therefore in the atmosphere of early and late geological times is almost as clear as that of life. Just as life proves that the earth can never have been extremely cold during hundreds of millions of years, so glaciation in moderately low lat.i.tudes near the dawn of earth history and at several later times, proves that the earth was not particularly hot even in those early days. The gentle progressive change of climate which is recorded in the rocks appears to have been only in slight measure a change in the mean temperature of the earth as a whole, and almost entirely a change in the distribution of temperature from place to place and season to season. Hence it seems probable that neither the earth's own emission of heat, nor the supply of solar heat, nor the power of the atmosphere to retain heat can have been much greater a few hundred million years ago than now. It is indeed possible that these three factors may have varied in such a way that any variation in one has been offset by variations of the others in the opposite direction. This, however, is so highly improbable that it seems advisable to a.s.sume that all three have remained relatively constant.

This conclusion together with a realization of the climatic significance of carbon dioxide has forced most of the adherents of the nebular hypothesis to abandon their a.s.sumption that carbon dioxide, the heaviest gas in the air, was very abundant until taken out by coal-forming plants or combined with the calcium oxide of igneous rocks to form the limestone secreted by animals. In the same way the presence of sun cracks in sedimentary rocks of all ages suggests that the air cannot have contained vast quant.i.ties of water vapor such as have been a.s.sumed by Knowlton and others in order to account for the former lack of sharp climatic contrast between the zones. Such a large amount of water vapor would almost certainly be accompanied by well-nigh universal and continual cloudiness so that there would be little chance for the pools on the earth's water-soaked surface to dry up. Furthermore, there is only one way in which such cloudiness could be maintained and that is by keeping the air at an almost constant temperature night and day. This would require that the chief source of warmth be the interior of the earth, a condition which the Proterozoic, Permian, and other widespread glaciations seem to disprove.