VOLCANOES MAKE COLD WEATHER.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 March 1924, Page 2

VOLCANOES MAKE COLD WEATHER.

-Mi- George E. Sieggs, Jt.S.c., writing under tin- above heading in the Daily .Mail of Jan. 9th, states:— Records of the climate of the world, from the year 80, when Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius, reveal the fact that serious disturbances of climate have followed great volcanic eruptions.

j In cases 'too numerous to bo coinciI donees the eruption of a volcano in any part of the world has been succeeded by one or two years markedly colder than the average. Indeed, modern science accounts for the Ice Age by the theory of vulcanism—that is to say, tlie activity of volcanoes. To understand how volcanoes can affect the climate one or two facts about the earth’s atmosphere must be borne in mind. It has been discovered by the method^ 1 of sending up balloons and kites, | carrying thermometers, that upwards i

front a height of b* miles there exists a great upper region of the atmosphere of constant temperature throughout, about 100 degrees below freezing. In this “high” atmosphere there are no clouds, no storms, no rain. The chiiids, storms, and rain all occur in the region of tlio atmosphere lower than lij miles.

Now, during eruption, volcanic dust is blown into the air as a great cloud over tho volcano. The eruption of Tomboro, which killed 5(1,000 people in 1815, blew up so much dust that for three days there was darkness at a distance of three hundred miles. Tlio dust cloud of volcanoes lias been measured from time to time and it lias been found to reach to a height of thirteen miles. Therefore a large , qunntitv of tlio dust is blown up into i tho “high” atmosphere, j Here, as explained, there are no

clouds to sweep it out and no rain to wash it out. Volcanic, dust particles are so minute that they may take more than a year to fall to the lower

atmosphere, when rain will wash them to the ground. Hence in a few months the volcanic dust spreads in tho high atmosphere over the entire earth. Now this veil of dust affects very pronouncedly the amount ol sunlight, that reaches the earth’s surface, ft has been shown by scientific experiment and calculation that the surprisingly small quantity of the 1,500 th part of a cubic mile of volcanic dust, distributed round the entire earth is sufficient to reduce the intensity of sunlight by 20 per cent, and, if continued. to produce an Tee Age. Tlio Ice Age itself, or rather the Ice Ages, are to-day believed to have run their course during periods of incessant volcanic activity.