Climate

“ Man in different climates varies in his colour, in his size, in his conformation, in his powers, in his industry, in his courage, and in the faculties of his mind. But, what is it that constitutes climate? It is the different position of parts of the same globe, relatively to the sun; positions that suffice to make a sensible variety in its productions. ”

“ The elements—temperature, sunshine, wind, humidity, and rainfall—are recognized as having importance and should be known for every part of our country. The latest movement is for facts in local climate, even that of the farm or certain parts of it, and of the soil. ”

“ We thus know that the present distribution of land and water greatly influences climate, more especially by affecting that of the ocean currents and of the winds, and by the different action of land as compared with water in the reception and radiation of heat. ”

“ Enough has been said to indicate that climate is nearly as important to animal life as it is to the vegetable existence, and that a cold climate, if it be not so extreme as to limit the production of cereal crops, and has frequent changes in temperature, pressure, sunshine, and cloud, favors the development of hardy and resourceful races of men; in fact, that no dominating race can exist without such stimulating conditions of climate. ”

“ The infinitely diversified character which climate displays may be referred to the combined operation of different causes, which are chiefly reducible to these four distance from the equator, height above the sea, distance from the sea, and prevailing winds, which may thus be regarded as forming the great bases of the law of climate. ”

“ Our climate, moreover, is of such extensive diversification, and offers such wide range of study and choice, that it would be a truculent author indeed who could not find somewhere the meterological moods that touched his fancy or waked his genius. ”

“ I will add, that if any one prefers a colder or a warmer climate than that of the place in which he lives, he need only go north or south for an hour; or, if he prefers his own latitude, he can rise a few thousand feet in the air, or descend to one of the worked-out coal-mines which are now used as sanitariums, and secure his object by a slight change of altitude. Let us speed the departure of racking changes and extremes of climate, and prepare to welcome what we believe prevails in paradise--namely, everlasting spring. ”

“ No factor has a more profound effect in determining the character and distribution of living things than climate, of which the most important elements, for our purpose, are temperature and moisture. One of the most surprising results of geological study is the clear proof that almost all parts of the earth have been subjected to great vicissitudes of climate, and a brief account of the evidence which has led to this unlooked for result will not be out of place here. ”

“ One of the most interesting questions with which geological science has to deal is that of the evolution of climate. Although there is no general agreement as to how former climatic fluctuations came about, yet the prevalent opinion is that in the past, just as in the present, the character of the climate must have depended mainly on latitude and the relative position of the great land- and water-areas. ”

“ In fact, it is the real centre of all gums, frankincenses, and myrrhs.
As man depends upon plants and animals, and as animals also are dependent on the plant world, it is the climate which really is responsible for everything.
The world of plants is entirely and exactly regulated by the character of the climate. What, then, is the climate of scrub?
Those countries enjoy brilliant sunshine, cloudless skies, and yet there is sufficient rain to permit of irrigation and to prevent the unmitigated desolation of the desert. ”

“ Climate too has changed again and again, either through the elevation of mountains in high latitudes leading to the accumulation of snow and ice, or by a change in the direction of winds and ocean currents produced by the subsidence or elevation of lands which connected continents and divided oceans. ”

“ The three climatic zones of moderate temperature are described in detail, and the distinctive features of the social condition and civilisation of their inhabitants dwelt upon. The influence of the atmosphere, heat, &c., on the physical and even mental and moral peculiarities of peoples is maintained to be great. Not only the darkness of skin of the negroes, but their characteristics of disposition and of mode of life, are traced to the influence of climate. ”

“ The word climate has certainly special reference to the character of the atmosphere, but this character is itself dependent on the perpetually concurrent influences of the ocean, which is universally and deeply agitated by currents having a totally opposite temperature, and of radiation from the dry land, which varies greatly in form, elevation, color, and fertility, whether we consider its bare, rocky portions, or those that are covered with arborescent or herbaceous vegetation. ”

“ Climate enters fundamentally into all consideration of geographic influences, either by implication or explicitly. It is a factor in most physiological and psychological effects of environment. It underlies the whole significance of zonal location, continental and insular. Large territorial areas are favorable to improved variation in men and animals partly because they comprise a diversity of natural conditions, of which a wide range of climates forms one. ”

“ Therefore it may be presumed that definite climatic conditions are required for the specific development of each type of species and for each kind of civilization. Just as history shows that one of the many conditions of human progress has changed repeatedly from century to century on account of variations in climatic factors, so these stimuli have, from the earliest times, swayed and modified all classes of organic life. Climate serves to develop, retard, or extinguish animal characteristics, habits, and development. ”

“ In any case this great change of climate, whether a greater or less importance be ascribed to it, is one of those occurrences in the history of the earth which have most powerfully influenced the distribution of organic forms. ”

“ The direct modification of man by climate is partly an a priori assumption, because the incontestable evidences of such modification are not very numerous, however strong the probability may be. The effect of climate upon plant and animal life is obvious, and immediately raises the assumption that man has been similarly influenced. ”

“ In the general journey southward, the plants of the mountains would descend to the plains and mingle with those of the far north. Then the climate commences to moderate; and, as the mountains of ice and snow retire to their original homes in the north, many of the plants would keep company with the cold and return, but many others, encountering mountains in their paths, would find the climate cold enough for their growth, and would be left there in isolation while their nearest relatives would be separated from them by hundreds of miles of country. ”

“ Climate.—The term climate, which means inclination, was applied by the ancients to denote that inclination of the axis of the terrestrial sphere from which result the inequalities of days in different latitudes. This inequality is obviously connected also with a difference of thermotical condition. Places near the poles are colder, on the whole, than places near the equator. ”

“ FACTORS OF CLIMATE AND THE CAUSES OF CLIMATIC FLUCTUATIONS The climate of any point on the earth’s surface depends on a complex of factors, some of them due to influences arriving from outside the earth, and others purely terrestrial. Since any variations of climate must be due to a change in one or more of these, it is necessary, before we can discuss changes of climate, to consider briefly what the factors are. ”

“ Heaven has blessed us with a climate which, notwithstanding its variations, is equal to almost any other on the face of the earth, and a soil capable of furnishing all the agricultural products of the temperate zone. ”

“ So the most excessive climate—that is, the climate where the greatest extremes alternate, other things being equal, is upon or near the line or area of greatest magnetic intensity. I say other things being equal, because large bodies of water modify climates by equalizing the seasons—making the summers cooler and the winters warmer than the mean of the parallel. ”

“ It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce a sensible influence on the general climate of the globe, though it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements. The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric precipitation, must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place by a multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the forest is doubtless one. ”

“ The climate, of the central table-land at least, must not be considered enervating. One must lay his ideas of climate, as depending upon latitude, aside, and comprehend that here it is a matter of elevation above the sea. ”

“ It may, however, be permitted us to state a few simple facts relative to the atmospheric temperature of our globe, and the adaptation of organic beings to the different degrees of heat within the inter-tropics, in the temperate and in the polar latitudes. Climate varies not only according to latitude, but also according to elevation, the relative proportions of land and water, the nature of the surface of the land, the extent of forests, etc. ”

“ Climate in its modern acceptation signifies that peculiar state of the atmosphere in regard to heat and moisture which prevails in any given place, together with its meteorological conditions generally in so far as they exert an influence on animal and vegetable life. ”

“ The climate has the most important influence upon vegetation, especially upon its endurance and its life-habits; for temperature, moisture, and light are the conditions on which the life of the plant depends in all its stages ”

“ The Houses or dwellings of these People are admirably calculated for the continual warmth of the Climate; they do not build them in Towns or Villages, but seperate each from the other, and always in the Woods, and are without walls, so that the air, cooled by the shade of the Trees, has free access in whatever direction it hapens to blow. ”

“ We are apt to talk as if the hyperborean conditions were no concern of ours, yet, as Alphonse Karr long ago remarked, we have only to sit still to find that these, and most other extremes of climate have come round to us. ”

“ It is now flourishing in population and science, and after a few more years of observation and collection of facts, they will doubtless furnish a theory of their climate. Years are requisite for this, steady attention to the thermometer, to the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its prevalent winds, quantities of rain and snow, temperature of fountains, animal inhabitants, etc. We want this, indeed, for all the states, and the work should be repeated once or twice in a century to show the effects of clearing and culture toward changes of climate. ”

“ Stern and forbidding as are the general features of our northern climate—cold and chilling as the gay Southron may deem, even the very air we breathe,—we have still some characteristics of climate peculiar to ourselves, and none the less pleasing to us from this fact. ”

“ The influence of climate has likewise been traced in the sad, even pessimistic tone of much of the northern literature, and in the gravity and melancholy of modern northern music, as well as of the older northern folk-songs ... even racial distinctions are more or less directly traceable, in many instances, to climate.... ”

“ Since our ultimate goal is to focus our discussion in on anthropogenic climate change, we can limit our attention to those factors that might play a significant role in understanding that problem. To begin, it might be helpful to get a very basic picture of how the Earth’s climate works, with particular attention to temperature, since this is a feature of the climate that will be of great interest to us as we proceed. ”

“ But we were all so willing to get into a warmer climate, that we did not incline to put in anywhere, till, having run thus fifteen days and the wind still holding southerly, with small alteration and clear weather, we could easily perceive the climate to change, and the weather grow milder. ”

“ Hence the conserving influence of forests on climate, making the nights warmer and the days cooler, imparting, in short, to the climates of districts clad with trees something of the character of insular climates. ”

“ Latitude, moreover, we find is only one factor, and a very vague one, in the problem of determining the relative hardiness of plants. Climate is the real governing. element—climate, that varies with the special conditions of every valley and hill-top. Yet the knowledge and insight that determine the relative hardiness of plants seem easy of acquisition in the eyes of the inexperienced. ”

“ Changes of Climate Favourable to Migration.—It is clear then, that during periods when no glacial epochs were produced in the northern hemisphere, and even when a mild climate extended over the whole polar area, alternate changes of climate favouring the dispersal of plants would occur on all high mountains, and with particular force on such as rise above the snow-line. ”