Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras. Alfred Russel Wallace
because all the sensible surface-heat which produces climates necessarily comes from the sun, and its proportionate amount may be very nearly calculated in the manner above described. We may therefore say, generally, that during our winter, at the time of the glacial epoch, the northern hemisphere was receiving so much less heat from the sun as was calculated to lower its surface temperature on an average about 39° F., while during the height of summer of the same period it would be receiving so much more heat as would suffice, other conditions being equal, to raise its mean temperature about 48° above what it is now. The winter, moreover, would be long and the summer short, the difference being twenty-six days.
We have here certainly an amount of cold in winter amply sufficient to produce a glacial period,45 especially as this cold would be long continued; but at the same time we should have almost tropical heat in summer, although that season would be somewhat shorter. How then, it may be asked, could such a climate have the effect supposed? Would not the snow that fell in winter be all melted by the excessively hot summer? In order to answer this question we must take account of certain properties of water and air, snow and ice, to which due weight has not been given by writers on this subject.
Properties of Air and Water, Snow and Ice, in Relation to Climate.—The great aerial ocean which surrounds us has the wonderful property of allowing the heat-rays from the sun to pass through it without its being warmed by them; but when the earth is heated the air gets warmed by contact with it, and also to a considerable extent by the heat radiated from the warm earth, because, although pure dry air allows such dark heat-rays to pass freely, yet the aqueous vapour and carbonic acid in the air intercept and absorb them. But the air thus warmed by the earth is in continual motion owing to changes of density. It rises up and flows off, owing to the greater weight of the cooler air which forces it up and takes its place; and thus heat can never accumulate in the atmosphere beyond a very moderate degree, the excessive sun-heat of the tropics being much of it carried away to the upper atmosphere and radiated into space. Water also is very mobile; and although it receives and stores up a great deal of heat, it is for ever dispersing it over the earth. The rain which brings down a certain portion of heat from the atmosphere, and which often absorbs heat from the earth on which it falls, flows away in streams to the ocean; while the ocean itself, constantly impelled by the winds, forms great currents, which carry off the surplus heated water of the tropics to the temperate and even to the polar regions, while colder water flows from the poles to ameliorate the heat of the tropics. An immense quantity of sun-heat is also used up in evaporating water, and the vapour thus produced is conveyed by the aerial currents to distant countries, where, on being condensed into rain, it gives up much of this heat to the earth and atmosphere.
The power of water in carrying away heat is well exhibited by the fact of the abnormally high temperature of arid deserts and of very dry countries generally; while the still more powerful influence of moving air may be appreciated, by considering the effects of even our northern sun in heating a tightly-closed glass house to far above the temperature produced by the vertical sun of the equator where the free air and abundance of moisture exert their beneficial influence. Were it not for the large proportion of the sun's heat carried away by air and water the tropics would become uninhabitable furnaces—as would indeed any part of the earth where the sun shone brightly throughout a summer's day.
We see, therefore, that the excess of heat derived from the sun at any place cannot be stored up to an important amount owing to the wonderful dispersing agency of air and water; and though some heat does penetrate the ground and is stored up there, this is so little in proportion to the whole amount received, and the larger part of it is so soon given out from the surface layers, that any surplus heat that may be thus preserved during one summer of the temperate zones rarely or never remains in sufficient quantity to affect the temperature of the succeeding summer, so that there is no such thing as an accumulation of earth-heat from year to year. But, though heat cannot, cold can be stored up to an almost unlimited amount, owing to the peculiar property water possesses of becoming solid at a moderately low temperature; and as this is a subject of the very greatest importance to our inquiry—the whole question of the possibility of glacial epochs and warm periods depending on it—we must consider it in some detail.
Effects of Snow on Climate.—Let us then examine the very different effects produced by water falling as a liquid in the form of rain, or as a solid in the form of snow, although the two may not differ from each other more than two or three degrees in temperature. The rain, however much of it may fall, runs off rapidly into streams and rivers, and soon reaches the ocean, a small portion only sinking into the earth and another portion evaporating into the atmosphere. If cold it cools the air and the earth somewhat while passing through or over them, but produces no permanent effect on temperature, because a few hours of sunshine restore to the air or the surface-soil all the heat they had lost. But if snow falls for a long time, the effect, as we all know, is very different, because it has no mobility. It remains where it fell and becomes compacted into a mass, and it then keeps the earth below it and the air above, at or near the freezing-point till it is all melted. If the quantity is great it may take days or weeks to melt; and if snow continues falling it goes on accumulating all over the surface of a country (which water cannot do), and may thus form such a mass that the warmth of the whole succeeding summer may not be able to melt it. It then produces perpetual snow, such as we find above a certain altitude on all the great mountains of the globe; and when this takes place cold is rendered permanent, no amount of sun-heat warming the air or the earth much above the freezing-point. This is illustrated by the often-quoted fact that, at 80° N. Lat., Captain Scoresby had the pitch melted on one side of his ship by the heat of the sun, while water was freezing on the other side owing to the coldness of the air.
The quantity of heat required to melt ice or snow is very great, as we all know by experience of the long time masses of snow will remain unmelted even in warm weather. We shall however be better able to appreciate the great effect this has upon climate, by a few figures showing what this amount really is. In order to melt one cubic foot of ice, as much heat is required as would heat a cubic foot of water from the freezing point to 176° F., or two cubic feet to 88° F. To melt a layer of ice a foot thick will therefore use up as much heat as would raise a layer of ice-cold water two feet thick to the temperature of 88° F.; and the effect becomes still more easily understood if we estimate it as applied to air, for to melt a layer of ice only 1½ inches thick would require as much heat as would raise a stratum of air 800 feet thick from the freezing point to the tropical heat of 88° F.! We thus obtain a good idea, both of the wonderful power of snow and ice in keeping down temperature, and also of the reason why it requires so long a time to melt away, and is able to go on accumulating to such an extent as to become permanent. These properties would, however, be of no avail if it were liquid, like water; hence it is the state of solidity and almost complete immobility of ice that enables it to produce by its accumulation such extraordinary effects in physical geography and in climate, as we see in the glaciers of Switzerland and the ice-capped interior of Greenland.
High Land and great Moisture Essential to the Initiation of a Glacial Epoch.—Another point of great importance in connection with this subject, is the fact, that this permanent storing up of cold depends entirely on the annual amount of snow-fall in proportion to that of the sun and air-heat, and not on the actual cold of winter, or even on the average cold of the year.46 A place may be intensely cold in winter and may have a short arctic summer, yet, if so little snow falls that it is quickly melted by the returning sun, there is nothing to prevent the summer being hot and the earth producing a luxuriant vegetation. As an example of this we have great forests in the extreme north of Asia and America where the winters are colder and the summers shorter than in Greenland in Lat. 62° N., or than in Heard Island and South Georgia, both in Lat. 53° S. in the Southern Ocean, and almost wholly covered with perpetual snow and ice. At the "Jardin" on the Mount Blanc range, above the line of perpetual snow, a thermometer in an exposed situation marked -6° F. as the lowest winter temperature: while in many parts of Siberia mercury freezes during several weeks in winter, showing a temperature below -40° F.; yet here the summers are hot, all the snow disappears, and there is a luxuriant vegetation. Even in the very highest latitudes reached by our last Arctic Expedition there is very little perpetual snow or ice, for Captain Nares tells
In a letter to
The reason of the theoretical increase of summer heat being greater than the decrease of winter cold is because we are now nearest the sun in winter and farthest in summer, whereas we calculate the temperatures of the glacial epoch for the phase of precession when the
Dr. Croll says this "is one of the most widespread and fundamental errors within the whole range of geological climatology." The temperature of the snow itself is, he says, one of the main factors. (