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"Freeze-up" In Britain Is          

Not the First  

Experiences   of the Ages  

By C.T.    

Britain has been engaged in a deadly battle against the forces of "General     Winter.'' England and Europe have been in the grip of the most severe cold in living memory. With snow piled high in London's streets and with recollections of the recent cold winters of 1939-40 and 1940-41 still fresh in their minds, people in

Europe may well ask themselves whether they are in for another ice age such as the one from which their countries emerged barely ten or twelve thousand years ago.    

THE recent freeze-up was not the

first, nor is it likely to be the last. History records periods of cold and heat, drought and rain, and the influence of weather and climate on the course of human history is great- er than many of us are inclined to admit.

In historic times we hear of a   "marvellous great snow" in England as early as A.D. 764, when there was "so extreme a frost as the like had not been heard of, continuing from the beginning of the winter almost   to the midst of spring." The year    

1254 began with long and severe frosts, and another very severe win- ter occurred in 1279, when snow lay on the ground in London from Christ-  

mastime until March. The Thames was frozen, and when the ice broke in the spring, five arches of London Bridge, which had then been stand- ing for eighty years, collapsed under  

the impact of the floes.

THE 14th century had a very bad record, with many complete   freeze-ups of all rivers both in Eng- land and on the Continent. Bad floods were caused by the spring  

thaws. Thus in 1342 Cologne and Mayence was completely inundated by the flood waters of the Rhine. It is recorded that the Baltic Sea was completely frozen several times during the 13th and 14th centuries.

Climatically, Europe had seen bet-  

ter days during the 9th and 10th cen- turies, when the northern oceans were free from ice for long periods, and  

the summers were warm and the win- ters mild. Favored by such condi- tions, the Vikings had spread far from their homes, and established their rule over large parts of west- ern and even southern Europe.

Another onslaught of rigorous con- ditions was experienced during the 16th and 17th centuries. Severe win-  

ters between 1640 and 1650 spelt ruin to many farms in England. Ice ac-   cumulated in the Alps, and from the end of the 16th till at least the mid- dle of the 17th century, the glaciers advanced several miles down the al-   pine valleys. Again the Baltic Sea

froze over many times, and Charles   XII., conquered Poland after a sur-  

prise dash with his army across the solid ice from Sweden.    

Closer to our time we have the re-  

cord of an unprecedented snowfall at

Chepstowe in England on March 24,

1888, when two inches of snow fell in two minutes, with flakes up to 4 inches in diameter! More severe even were the snowstorms of 1891, probably the worst on record, and of Christmas, 1927, when the snow was piling up all over southern England.

Still remembered by many is the bitter cold of the winter of 1917-18 at the height of the First World War. All of Europe was blanketed with snow, all the rivers were frozen over, and the severe cold caused   great hardships to millions of soldiers in their trenches from France to central Russia. Similar conditions recurred in the winter of 1928-29.

Cold winters are brought about by the spread of what is known as "Con- tinental weather conditions," with easterly winds, which are dry and hot in summer, cold in wintertime; so cold winters are often paired with hot summers, resulting in crop fail- ures, famine and general decline in

living standards, aggravated by the rigorous winters that follow. The earliest drought-caused famine re- corded in England is one in A.D. 208, but the most severe droughts on record are those of 1315, 1316 and 1321. There was generally a long dry spell from 1308 to 1322, and food was scarce all the time. The price of wheat rose rapidly after the bad harvest of 1310;, and in May, 1316, it had risen to five times the nor- mal level. People subsisted on a diet of roots, and horses and dogs were killed for food. Thousands died and a great shortage of labor resulted. Again, the summer of 1592 was so dry that the Thames at London could be crossed on horse-

back.

The intervening periods of more genial climate, characterised by pre- dominantly humid westerly winds, with cooler summers and warmer winters, brought increased rainfall and general storminess. There can be no doubt that the 11th and 12th cen- turies were such a period of violent gales, which brought great suffering to the countries bordering the North Sea. An unprecedented flood on No- vember 11, 1099, claimed 100,000 vic- tims in Holland and England, and exceptional storms in 1218 and 1219 broke the dykes of Holland and Fri- sia. The great flood of November 19, 1421, gave the Zuyder Zee the form it retained until Dutch engineering   skill reclaimed it from the sea some 10 or 15 years ago.

The question has naturally arisen whether the climatic changes are in any way periodic, and therefore pre- dictable. In the last analysis all our weather is controlled by the sun. Is it possible that changes in climate are due to changes in solar radiation.

The phenomenon of sun spots is

known to all. Large sun spots can be seen easily with the naked eye if the sun is viewed through a smoked glass. Now the number of sun spots varies in cycles of about 11 years and a half, and it has been observed that an increase in sun spot activity is often accompanied by dry summers and cool winters, but this is by no means always the case. The cold European winters of 1917-18, 1928-29 and 1939-40 seemed to fit in admirably with the sun spot cycle, but the present cold spell falls half- way in a period and spoils the pic- ture. More probably the weather follows a 23-year cycle, equally two sun spot cycles in length, but the laws of the weather are not yet known in such detail as would make long-range prediction a practical possibility.

Old people of all generations are convinced that the weather is not what it used to be; it has either be- come colder or warmer, drier or rainier. Sometimes this impression may be purely psychological, due to   extreme colds or droughts having been experienced at an early impres- sive age. On the other hand, we have seen that the climate does have its "ups" and "downs," but of one thing we may be certain: during the last 26 centuries there has been no overall change, no profound modifi- cation of climatic conditions towards a colder or warmer state. No sec- ond ice age is as yet in sight, al- though just when Europe will be in for another long mild spell may be anybody's guess.

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