The Philosophy of the Weather Part 6

Recent discoveries have shown that the magnetic force is exerted in lines and currents; that such currents, as physical lines of force, surround magnets, and currents of electricity. Doubtless such lines of force exist around the earth and the magnetic poles. There are also _longitudinal_ lines of force existing and active, between the poles, and extending from one side of the center to the other, occupying nearly one third of the magnet. If you take a large needle thoroughly magnetized, place it upon paper and drop filings of iron upon it, they will become arranged about it in circular and perpendicular, and also in _longitudinal lines_, conforming to the currents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.]

This experiment is ill.u.s.trated in all our books on natural philosophy.

The foregoing diagram, copied from Olmstead's Philosophy, does not show as accurately as Faraday's projection of the lines upon a globe-magnet the comparative distance from the poles of the needle, at which the longitudinal currents commence and terminate, and _where the filings will not adhere_ to any considerable extent. The lines shown upon the needle should bear the same proportion to its length as the trade-winds bear to that of the earth, measured from pole to pole, and if the needle had a globular form they would so appear.

These lines are made by currents arising from one side of the magnetic equator, and pa.s.sing over to the other. Doubtless, just such currents rise, and pa.s.s over upon the earth.

Magnetic and electric currents carry the air with them. This is well settled by experiment. _Oxygen_, too, is _magnetic_, and capable both of receiving and retaining polarity and of combining with, or attracting and retaining vapor, and of course the moisture of evaporation. Here then we have a power existing, capable of producing the result--precisely, and with evident wisdom adapted to its production--ever present and active; and no other known agent can.

Is it not then the agent?

Let us look a little further. This result is affected by the action of the sun: the trades with the central belts of rains travel north and south after it; so does the sun affect the magnetic currents every where, even the magnetic needle is daily affected by its action, as it increases the intensity of the terrestrial magnetic currents, and hence its well established diurnal oscillations.

Again, along the eastern lines of the continents which skirt the great oceans on the west, run the northerly and southerly lines of no variation, and of greatest magnetic intensity. Here are the trade currents gathered into a volume, which curve and carry unusual fertility to South-eastern Asia, and North America, and in those great aerial gulf streams we find the _intense_ electric action which produces the typhoons of the former, and the hurricanes of the latter. It may still be said that these conditions and phenomena of the trade-wind region, are not produced by magnetism or magneto-electricity, _but the objector can point to no other adequate power_. That it must be heat, electricity, or magnetism, must be admitted. There is no other power known. Heat demonstrably can not produce them. Magnetism or electricity therefore must, and they are doubtless states or phases of the same power, producing in their different states or phases the different results. And even heat--atmospheric temperature, is often, if not always the result of their action. In the present state of science, it is enough for me that the _magnetic longitudinal currents are there_; that they are _lines of force_ and _adequate_; that _oxygen is magnetic_, and therefore the atmosphere must be affected by them--that so far as we can reason from a.n.a.logy, they ought to produce the effect upon the atmosphere which we find produced, and until further light is thrown upon the subject I shall presume that they do. Every step we take hereafter in this investigation will confirm the presumption.

There is one peculiarity to be more particularly noticed before we leave the trade-wind region, and we are now prepared to notice it.

The belt of rains, formed by the currents of the two trades, threading their way through each other--how are they produced? Why should the place where the currents thus pa.s.s through each other be a place of almost daily precipitation? There is, in fact, no ascension, except that which the currents have in their line of ascent to attain the elevation which the magnetic law of the current requires.

The trades have pa.s.sed over an evaporating surface and are charged with moisture. This moisture they hold in magneto-electric combination.

_Evaporation_ does not depend upon _temperature_. Ice and snow evaporate at all temperatures (Howard, vol. 1, p. 86). So the cold N. W. wind, full of positive electricity, will lap up, as it were, the pools from the earth, with astonishing quickness; and when this electricity is deranging the action of the machinery and material of the manufacturer, he allays it by a supply of moisture, with which the electricity can combine. Nor does the air lose its moisture when below the freezing point. In all parts of the atmosphere, as at the surface of the earth in winter, moisture is held in large quant.i.ties in the coldest and severest weather; and it is not till it moderates, and a perceptible _electric_ change takes place, that it is precipitated as rain or snow. Doubtless there is an exposure of considerable surfaces, of opposite currents, charged with opposite polarity, and a constant depolarization where their surfaces meet. May there not be a consequent dissolution of the electro-magnetic combination between the air and moisture, or the excitation of that electric action which attends or produces like rains every where? and hence the constant precipitation. This is rendered probable, by the fact that precipitation, at the meeting of the trades, takes place in level countries in the day-time, between 10 A. M. and sunset, in showers, with thunder and lightning, as with us in summer, although among the mountains the rain sometimes falls in the night also. The precipitation in the heat of the day is obviously induced by the action of the sun, although it is by no means certain that the friction of the opposing surfaces does not a.s.sist in the operation.

I am well aware that the lines of magnetic force curve upward and carry the trades with them, and that, therefore, precipitation by condensation from the mere cold of the upper stratum of the atmosphere is possible.

But, there are three reasons why I do not believe such to be the fact.

1st. Precipitation takes place in the day time mainly, and in sudden, isolated, heavy showers and not in steady continuous rain. Nor is there condensation or continual mist at other hours of the day.

2d. They occur at a time of day when the sun is affecting the magnetic currents most powerfully, _viz._, between ten o'clock A. M. and sunset, and mainly at the time of greatest heat.

3d. The counter-trades _do not precipitate_ after they leave the rainy belt, although at a great elevation, until they reach the outward limits of the trades; and they _do precipitate again_, although they gradually descend _nearer the earth_, as soon as they become subject to the action of the currents of an opposite magnetism. Their precipitation is partial too, even then, and they carry a portion of their moisture through an atmosphere of the coldest temperature up to the geographical poles.

A similar result attends the action of the sun in the extra-tropical regions. c.u.muli commence forming in the counter-trade, or at the line between that and the surface current, at the same time of day that the diurnal motion of the magnetic needle commences, or the rain clouds form in the tropics; they continue to enlarge here as there, till about the same hour of the day that the _needle_ obtains its maximum diurnal variations; and when the influence of the sun upon the needle ceases, and it returns to its original status, the c.u.muli disappear. Hail storms too, it is said, always, or generally occur in the day time.

In like manner the sea-breezes and other fair-weather surface winds, rise in the forenoon with the influence of the sun upon the magnetic currents and the needle, and die away at nightfall when the influence ceases.

There are other electro-magnetic, or to speak more correctly, magneto-electric, effects of the sun's action equally ill.u.s.trative, which tend to show that the precipitation at the pa.s.sing of the trades, is the result of their action upon each other, aided by the sun, to which we shall allude when we come to speak of the causes and character of the surface winds of the extra-tropical regions.

As, however, this takes place only, or mainly, where the threading surfaces meet, it is but partial, and the body of the respective polarized currents pursue their way unaffected, toward the opposite magnetic pole--and there for the present we leave them.

Storms sometimes originate in these currents, when concentrated, as in the West Indies, the China Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and Indian Ocean, while pa.s.sing through the rainy belt, and move with the current to the north-west if issuing on the north side of it, and to the south-west if issuing on the south side of it, until they respectively get beyond the extreme limits of the trades, and then they curve to the eastward, imbedded in and following their current. The peculiar extension of the land to the east on the northern portions of South America, prevents the gathering of an aerial gulf similar to the one which we have described to the north-west, entering upon our division of the continent over the Gulf of Mexico. It is otherwise in the Indian Ocean, and there the storms are found issuing from the rainy belt on the southern side, sweeping over the Mauritius and other islands of that ocean, and _often simultaneously_ with storms issuing on the north over the Bay of Bengal. Colonel Reid mentions instances and gives a diagram.[2]

These storms in milder forms issue from the rain belt at other points, and may issue any where, but will always be found most extensive and most violent, that is to say, as hurricanes and typhoons, in the concentrated volumes of counter-trade on the western side of the great oceans, within a few hundred miles of the lines of magnetic intensity and no variation, and when they form in the rainy belt they are highly electric. Most frequently, however, as we shall see, they form in these currents after they have issued from the rainy belt, and after they have pa.s.sed the extreme limits of the trades and become subject to the circular and perpendicular magnetic currents which exist north and south of the longitudinal ones, and which when seen upon the magnetic needle, attract the filings and cause them to adhere--although but slight attraction or adhesion takes place where the longitudinal currents exist.

Such, then, are the atmospheric arrangements and phenomena of the trade-wind region, and the cause that produces them; such is the character and cause of the enlarged volume of counter-trade, which spreads out and blows over our country as permanently as the S. E. trades blow on the South Atlantic and South America, returning to us the rivers which had run from us to the sea.

CHAPTER VI.

Coming back now, to a consideration of the course and functions of the counter-trade after it leaves the northern limit of the surface-trades, we find it curves to the eastward and gradually a.s.sumes about an E. N. E.

course, and becomes a W. S. W. current where it crosses the line of no variation, and continues on until it pa.s.ses off over the Atlantic; and this course and curve is a.n.a.logous to what may be found true of the counter-trades every where. It is best ill.u.s.trated by the course of all the storms (in the American sense of the word, as distinguished from thunder showers and other brief rains), which have been traced north or south of the limits of the trades. It was found by Mr. Redfield in most of the storms investigated by him, which originated within, or north of the tropics.

Doubtless it was the actual course of the others, and that the investigation was imperfect. All the great autumnal, winter, or spring storms which have traversed the whole or any considerable portion of the territory of the United States, east of New Mexico, which have been investigated by Professors Espy, Loomis, Redfield, or others, have been found to follow this course. A storm which pa.s.sed over Madeira, appears from the investigations of Colonel Reid to have followed the same law of curvature.

And so, doubtless, did another which he has described as pa.s.sing over the Levant. The storms which supply the winter rains of California and Utah, reach them by this law of curvature and progress, after the northern limits of the trades have descended to the south with the sun, so that the counter-trades of the Pacific may descend to the surface and curve in upon them. But the absence of a concentration of the counter-trade, and its deficient action because of its pa.s.sage over mountain ranges, and their location so near the northern limit of the trades that their storms can not expand and become extensive, as well as their weaker magnetic intensity, prevent their storms from becoming violent, and their supply of rain is not large and much of it falls in showers. The same is true of the Barbary States, of Syria, and Persia, and of Southern Europe; and indeed of all the countries of the globe which lie between the winter and summer extreme limits of the surface-trades, and without the limits of the two concentrated counter-trades. Enough appears in the writings of the meteorologists of Europe to show, that their long continued rains, which are a.n.a.logous to our storms and are _preceded by the formation of the true cirrus of the counter-trade_, follow the same great law of curvature and progress; although the presence of the Gulf Stream with its ma.s.s of south polar waters on the western side of the British Islands, Denmark, and Norway supplies them with showers, and fogs, and c.u.muli from the west and north-west, and makes the mean of the surface winds of their storms somewhat variant from ours. A like law reversed prevails in the southern hemisphere. The storms of New Holland and the Indian Ocean, south of the limits of the trade, curve to the eastward and travel about south-east, their _south-west_ being a _clearing off wind_ as our _north-west_ is, and _precisely similar in all its other characteristics_, where the relation of magnetic intensity is the same.

The storms of the Pacific on the S. W. coast of South America, in like manner travel to the S. E., flooding the western slopes of the mountain ranges with rain, and aggravated by the intensity of the magnetic currents at the extremity of the continent in a high lat.i.tude, meet the mariner in the face as he emerges from under the lee of the land and attempts to pa.s.s the Horn. It will ultimately be shown that the precipitation which takes place, as the storms and counter-trades pa.s.s north and east in the northern hemisphere and south and east in the southern hemisphere, is owing less to cold than increased magnetic intensity. And all this is the result of one great uniform law, existing every where, varying in its phenomena only in consequence of the difference in volume, and magneto-electric intensity of the portions of the counter-trade, as of the surface-trade at different places, and the different magnetic intensity of the local perpendicular and circular currents of the earth over which they pa.s.s, at different periods and at different points.

Mr. Redfield and Lieutenant Maury have a.s.sumed that our S. W. current comes from the Pacific Ocean. Aside from the adverse evidence which the investigations of the former in relation to the course of the West Indian storms, and their curving over the continent, furnish to the contrary, and that which has herein before been stated in relation to the law of curvature, it is obvious they are mistaken, for another and conclusive reason.

In order to reach us from the Pacific in a direction from S. W. to N. E., it must pa.s.s the table lands and mountain ranges of Mexico and New Mexico, and it would supply them bountifully, even if it did not thereby leave us comparatively rainless and sterile. Every where currents pa.s.sing from the ocean _over mountain ranges_ part with a large share of their moisture.

Thus the counter-trade which curves over the Andes and over Peru, is deprived of its moisture and leaves the western coast rainless. So in degree of the counter-trade which curves over the Himalaya and Kuenlon Mountains, and from there pa.s.ses over the Desert of Cobi, to the north and east--it is deprived by those elevated ranges of its moisture. So the mountains on the south-western coast of South America are drenched with rain, while Patagonia, which lies on the east of them is comparatively dry. And so of every other country similarly situated.

Now the mountain ranges and table lands of Mexico are not thus supplied with moisture. For the s.p.a.ce of four months in Southern and less in Northern Mexico, and in summer, and while the belt of the tropics is extended up over them, they have rain and in daily showers which _travel up from the south_, indicating the course of the counter-trade. (See Bartlett's Personal Narrative, vol. ii. p. 286.) At other seasons, and while we are bountifully supplied, they are dry. In short, there are no two portions of the earth that differ more widely in regard to their supply of moisture, and all their climatic characteristics and relations.

It is therefore, according to all a.n.a.logy, impossible that our counter-trade should come from the South Pacific across the continent and below 35, and in this also those gentlemen are mistaken.

Messrs. Espy and Redfield recognizing the existence of "a prevailing" S.

W. current, but considering the surface-winds beneath it as the princ.i.p.al actors in producing the atmospherical conditions and changes, have attributed no office to that current, except that of giving direction and progression to our storms. This is their great mistake. It plays no such unimportant part in the philosophy of the weather, as we have already incidentally seen, and will proceed still further to consider.

_All our storms originate in it._ This we may know from a.n.a.logy.

_Where there is no counter-trade, outside of the equatorial belt of rains, and within influential distance of the earth, there are neither storms nor rain._ So, when, as we have seen, the concentration of the volume of northern counter-trade in the West Indies, gathered by the hauling of the S. E. trades more from the east, as they approach the central belt, diminishing the volume of the counter-trade over the North Atlantic, the calms and drought of the horse-lat.i.tudes are found. And when the counter-trade is small in volume and weak in intensity, by reason of the fact that the surface-trades from the opposite hemisphere which const.i.tute it, formed upon land where evaporation was small, as upon Southern Africa and New Holland, or formed where the magnetic intensity was weak, or pa.s.sed over mountain ranges in their course, the annual supply of rain, the ranges of the barometer, and the alternations of atmospheres conditions are remarkably less.

We have already seen where the rainless portions of the earth are, and why they are so; because those lying north of the northern limit of the equatorial rainy belt were yet too far south to be covered by the line of extra-tropical rains; or in other words, too far south to be uncovered by the surface N. E. trades and the longitudinal magnetic currents, and to be covered by the counter-trades in contact, or nearly so with the earth, and influenced by the perpendicular north polar magnetic currents. Thus we have seen that the rains of Southern Mexico were summer rains, due to the northern extension of the equatorial rainy belt; those of California were winter rains, due to the southern extension of the extra-tropical rains following the N. E. surface trades. We have also briefly alluded to the fact that either side of the equatorial rainy belt, evaporation is going on for months under a vertical sun, without precipitation--unless it be from an occasional brief storm of great intensity which originates in that belt at the line of it, and pa.s.sing on in the counter-trade, reverses, for the time being, by its concentrated and powerful action, like a magnetic body introduced into the field of another magnet, the surface-trades. Mere evaporation then, does not produce the storm, or shower, or rain, where most active in the dry torrid zone. It may be said that those dry portions are, for the time being (as the rainless portions of the earth are continually), within the operation of the surface-trades, and that therefore the evaporated moisture is carried away by them toward the equatorial rainy belt. Precisely so; but why carried away? Why should it not condense, occasionally, at least, and drop the rain as it pa.s.ses along, if a great supply of moisture from excessive evaporation could furnish rain. Perhaps it may still be said it is going from a cold to a warm section. This is not true, as we have shown.

But, it may be said that the rainless regions at any rate receive no moisture, and therefore can not supply any by evaporation. This would not meet the case, as it would still be true that when the rainy belt has left a given spot, the dry weather sets in with excessive evaporation, and the north-east trades in summer, blowing from the countries lying north of the rainless regions, and which have been supplied during the interval by the extra-tropical rains, and are loaded with evaporation, are pa.s.sing over the rainless regions on their way to enter the central belt. So blow the N. E. trades from the Mediterranean, and the Barbary States _over the Desert of Sahara_ and into the rainy belt south of it; but drop no moisture on their way, because exposed to no magnetic currents of an opposite polarity.

But it is not true that all the rainless regions are without evaporation.

Egypt is an exception. The annual freshets of the Nile saturate its central valley, and vast reservoirs of water are saved from it and let out over its surface, and it all evaporates, but produces no rain. And so are large quant.i.ties turned aside and scattered over the bottom lands of Northern Mexico, and other countries, during the dry season, and their evaporation furnishes no rain. Hygrometers and dew points are of no consequence there--nor are they of any, on either side of the rainy belt, where six perpendicular feet of moisture is evaporated in six months.

Again we have alluded to a strip of coast on the Pacific west of the mountain ranges of South America, lying partly in Peru, partly in Bolivia, and partly in Northern Chili, which, although long and narrow, washed by the broad Pacific Ocean, is without rain. South America has no other _wholly_ rainless region, so far as is known. A part of this region would lie between the equatorial belt of rain, and the southern extra-tropical one, and never be covered by either; but the volume of N. E. trades from the Atlantic, although from the make of the land not concentrated to so great an extent as the volume of S. E. trade on the north, and therefore not so liable to hurricanes and other violent storms, is yet sufficiently so to carry the southern line of the equinoctial rainy belt down in winter to the summer line of extra-tropical rains, and give a supply of rain to all the continent--leaving no strictly rainless region south of the equatorial rainy belt and east of the Andes. Those mountains, however, present a barrier to its south-western progress which it doubtless pa.s.ses to some extent, but deprived of its moisture, and unable to supply the rainless coast region of Peru, Bolivia, and Northern Chili. There is, therefore, a portion of this rainless line of coast which is within the region of extra-tropical rains, over which a portion of the N. E. trades of the Atlantic, as a counter-trade, should or do, curve, and where there should therefore be extra-tropical rains. It is washed by the Pacific, an evaporating surface, and westerly and south-west breezes are drawn in from that ocean over it. Why then is it rainless? The only reason which can be a.s.signed why rain does not fall there is that the high mountain ranges of the Andes intercept and perhaps in part divert the counter-trade, and deprive that portion of it which pa.s.ses them, of its moisture, by that reciprocal action of opposite polarities which takes place whenever and wherever the trade approaches so near the earth; and it curves over the narrow line of coast with the feeble condensation, and imperfect forms, and varied coloring which mark so peculiarly the rainless clouds of that region. (See Stewart's Journal of a Voyage to the Sandwich Islands, page 72.)

Again, it is estimated, and on reliable data, that twelve perpendicular feet of water are annually evaporated from the surface of the Red Sea, between Nubia on one side, and Arabia on the other; yet they are both rainless countries, except so far as the inter-tropical belt of rains extends up on to a small portion of them. The moisture of evaporation, floated up from a surface covered by the surface-trade is invariably so combined as to remain uncondensed till it has pa.s.sed south into the equatorial rainy belt, and over to the opposite hemisphere, and been exposed to the currents of an opposite magnetism.

Again, the N. E. trades extended up in summer over the Mediterranean Sea, an evaporating surface, blow over the Barbary States in June and July, but furnish no rain. And so of the S. E. or N. E. trades which blow over Brazil and other countries in the absence north or south of the tropical belt of rains.

It is obvious from these facts--and more like them might be cited--that mere evaporation, however copious or long continued, does not make the storm or shower in the locality where it takes place, and _without the existence and influential agency_ of a counter-trade; and that _reciprocal action_, whatever it may be, that takes place _between it and the earth_.

Again, our own experience is conclusive of this. We have no surface-trade north of 30, and yet a long drought and great evaporation may follow a wet spring. Belts of droughts and frequent rains occur every year in different portions of the country side by side, and _the dividing line follows the course of the counter-trade_, and is sometimes distinctly marked for weeks. When a change occurs in the counter-trade, whether from causes existing there or the influence of terrestrial magnetism (in relation to which we shall inquire hereafter), showers form or storms come on: until it does they will not. Efforts at condensation will occasionally appear, but they will be feeble and ineffectual, and occasion a repet.i.tion of the axiom that "all signs fail in a drought." And we may know it from direct observation.

The first indications of a storm, and of most if not all showers, are observable in the counter-trade. These indications, so far as they are visible, are of course to be looked for in the west; although the direction and character of the surface-winds are often indicative of these changes when not visible at the west as we shall see.