SUNSPOTS AFFECT RADIO?

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 12, 29 September 1933, Unnumbered Page

SUNSPOTS AFFECT RADIO?

Canadian Scientist Says ‘ Sunspot Cycle is Far-reaching

AN unusual number of electrical storms recently in Hastern Canada has called public attention to the theory long held by Dr. Ralph B. DeLury, astronomical expert in the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa, that precipitation, temperature and storms are linked closely with the sunspot cycle of a little more than eleven years, The present season has seen sunspots at their minimum, and it is Dr. DeLury’s conclusion, based on lergthy research and much study of the: meteorological records, that at sueh.a time electrical disturbances are at their pen. Dr. DeLury finds evidences of the sunspot eyele in displays of aurora, interference with radio and telegraph transmission, voleanie activity, quakes, the brightness of comets, the rate of melting.ef the polar ice cars on the planet Mars, disease epidemics. grasshopper plagues, the growth cf trees, and in fact on all animgl and vegetable life. He has studied records of the years 1784 to 1869 and declares that over this period "the commodity prices in Great Britain and Ireland showed the effect of the eleven-year eycle, prices being at their lowest.’on the average a year or two after the maximum of sunspots." The lafest maximum, it is interesting to note, was in 1928. "Indeed," writes this scientist, "there is the possibility that wars, being dependent on economic conditions, also are influenced by solar variations," aa rey Terr