The cause of the favorable conditions in the Viking-age was, according to my hypothesis, that the ice then melted at a higher lat.i.tude in the arctic seas.
The Eskimos then lived further north in Greenland and North America.
When the climate deteriorated and the sea which gave them their living was closed by ice the Eskimos had to find a more suitable neighborhood. This they found in the land colonized by the Nors.e.m.e.n whom they attacked and finally annihilated.
Finally, far to the south in Yucatan the ancient Maya civilization made its last flickering effort at about this time. Not much is known of this but in earlier periods the history of the Mayas seems to have agreed quite closely with the fluctuations in climate.[36] Among the Mayas, as we have seen, relatively dry periods were the times of greatest progress.
Let us turn now to Fig. 3 once more and compare the climatic conditions of the fourteenth century with those of periods of increasing rainfall.
Southern England, Ireland, and Scandinavia, where the crops were ruined by extensive rain and storms in summer, are places where storminess and rainfall now increase when sunspots are numerous. Central Europe and the coasts of the North Sea, where flood and drought alternated, are regions which now have relatively less rain when sunspots increase than when they diminish. However, as appears from the trees measured by Dougla.s.s, the winters become more continental and hence cooler, thus corresponding to the cold winters of the fourteenth century when people walked on the ice from Scandinavia to Denmark. When such high pressure prevails in the winter, the total rainfall is diminished, but nevertheless the storms are more severe than usual, especially in the spring. In southeastern Europe, the part of the area whence the Caspian derives its water, appears to have less rainfall during times of increasing sunspots than when sunspots are few, but in an equally large area to the south, where the mountains are higher and the run-off of the rain is more rapid, the reverse is the case. This seems to mean that a slight diminution in the water poured in by the Volga would be more than compensated by the water derived from Persia and from the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, which in the fourteenth century appear to have filled the Sea of Aral and overflowed in a large stream to the Caspian. Still farther east in central Asia, so far as the records go, most of the country receives more rain when sunspots are many than when they are few, which would agree with what happened when the Dragon Town was inundated. In India, on the contrary, there is a large area where the rainfall diminishes at times of many sunspots, thus agreeing with the terrible famine from which the Moguls suffered so severely. In the western hemisphere, Greenland, Arizona, and California are all parts of the area where the rain increases with many sunspots, while Yucatan seems to lie in an area of the opposite type.
Thus all the evidence seems to show that at times of climatic stress, such as the fourteenth century, the conditions are essentially the same as those which now prevail at times of increasing sunspots.
As to the number of sunspots, there is little evidence previous to about 1750. Yet that little is both interesting and important. Although sunspots have been observed with care in Europe only a little more than three centuries, the Chinese have records which go back nearly to the beginning of the Christian era. Of course the records are far from perfect, for the work was done by individuals and not by any great organization which continued the same methods from generation to generation. The mere fact that a good observer happened to use his smoked gla.s.s to advantage may cause a particular period to appear to have an unusual number of spots. On the other hand, the fact that such an observer finds spots at some times and not at others tends to give a valuable check on his results, as does the comparison of one observer"s work with that of another. Hence, in spite of many and obvious defects, most students of the problem agree that the Chinese record possesses much value, and that for a thousand years or more it gives a fairly true idea of the general aspect of the sun. In the Chinese records the years with many spots fall in groups, as would be expected, and are sometimes separated by long intervals. Certain centuries appear to have been marked by unusual spottedness. The most conspicuous of these is the fourteenth, when the years 1370 to 1385 were particularly noteworthy, for spots large enough to be visible to the naked eye covered the sun much of the time. Hence Wolf,[37] who has made an exhaustive study of the matter, concludes that there was an absolute maximum of spots about 1372. While this date is avowedly open to question, the great abundance of sunspots at that time makes it probable that it cannot be far wrong.
If this is so, it seems that the great climatic disturbances of which we have seen evidence in the fourteenth century occurred at a time when sunspots were increasing, or at least when solar activity was under some profoundly disturbing influence. Thus the evidence seems to show not merely that the climate of historic times has been subject to important pulsations, but that those pulsations were magnifications of the little climatic changes which now take place in sunspot cycles. The past and the present are apparently a unit except as to the intensity of the changes.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: O. Pettersson: The connection between hydrographical and meteorological phenomena; Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 38, pp. 174-175.]
[Footnote 32: A. Norlind: Einige Bemerkungen uber das Klima der historischen Zeit nebst einem Verzeichnis mittelaltlicher Witterungs erscheinungen; Lunds Univ. Arsskrift, N. F., Vol. 10, 1914, 53 pp.]
[Footnote 33: Thorwald Rogers: A History of Agriculture and Prices in England.]
[Footnote 34: E. Bruckner: Klimaschw.a.n.kungen seit 1700, Vienna, 1891.]
[Footnote 35: For a full discussion of the changes in the Caspian Sea, see The Pulse of Asia, pp. 329-358.]
[Footnote 36: S. Q. Morley: The Inscriptions at Copan; Carnegie Inst. of Wash., No. 219, 1920.
Ellsworth Huntington: The Red Man"s Continent, 1919.]
[Footnote 37: See summary of Wolf"s work with additional information by H. Fritz; Zurich Vierteljahrschrift, Vol. 38, 1893, pp. 77-107.]
CHAPTER VII
GLACIATION ACCORDING TO THE SOLAR-CYCLONIC HYPOTHESIS[38]
The remarkable phenomena of glacial periods afford perhaps the best available test to which any climatic hypothesis can be subjected. In this chapter and the two that follow, we shall apply this test. Since much more is known about the recent Great Ice Age, or Pleistocene glaciation, than about the more ancient glaciations, the problems of the Pleistocene will receive especial attention. In the present chapter the oncoming of glaciation and the subsequent disappearance of the ice will be outlined in the light of what would be expected according to the solar-cyclonic hypothesis. Then in the next chapter several problems of especial climatic significance will be considered, such as the localization of ice sheets, the succession of severe glacial and mild inter-glacial epochs, the sudden commencement of glaciation and the peculiar variations in the height of the snow line. Other topics to be considered are the occurrence of pluvial or rainy climates in non-glaciated regions, and glaciation near sea level in subtropical lat.i.tudes during the Permian and Proterozoic. Then in Chapter IX we shall consider the development and distribution of the remarkable deposits of wind-blown material known as loess.
Facts not considered at the time of framing an hypothesis are especially significant in testing it. In this particular case, the cyclonic hypothesis was framed to explain the historic changes of climate revealed by a study of ruins, tree rings, and the terraces of streams and lakes, without special thought of glaciation or other geologic changes. Indeed, the hypothesis had reached nearly its present form before much attention was given to geological phases of the problem.
Nevertheless, it appears to meet even this severe test.
According to the solar-cyclonic hypothesis, the Pleistocene glacial period was inaugurated at a time when certain terrestrial conditions tended to make the earth especially favorable for glaciation. How these conditions arose will be considered later. Here it is enough to state what they were. Chief among them was the fact that the continents stood unusually high and were unusually large. This, however, was not the primary cause of glaciation, for many of the areas which were soon to be glaciated were little above sea level. For example, it seems clear that New England stood less than a thousand feet higher than now. Indeed, Salisbury[39] estimates that eastern North America in general stood not more than a few hundred feet higher than now, and W. B. Wright[40]
reaches the same conclusion in respect to the British Isles.
Nevertheless, widespread lands, even if they are not all high, lead to climatic conditions which favor glaciation. For example, enlarged continents cause low temperature in high lat.i.tudes because they interfere with the ocean currents that carry heat polewards. Such continents also cause relatively cold winters, for lands cool much sooner than does the ocean. Another result is a diminution of water vapor, not only because cold air cannot hold much vapor, but also because the oceanic area from which evaporation takes place is reduced by the emergence of the continents. Again, when the continents are extensive the amount of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere probably decreases, for the augmented erosion due to uplift exposes much igneous rock to the air, and weathering consumes the atmospheric carbon dioxide.
When the supply of water vapor and of atmospheric carbon dioxide is small, an extreme type of climate usually prevails. The combined result of all these conditions is that continental emergence causes the climate to be somewhat cool and to be marked by relatively great contrasts from season to season and from lat.i.tude to lat.i.tude.
When the terrestrial conditions thus permitted glaciation, unusual solar activity is supposed to have greatly increased the number and severity of storms and to have altered their location, just as now happens at times of many sunspots. If such a change in storminess had occurred when terrestrial conditions were unfavorable for glaciation, as, for example, when the lands were low and there were widespread epicontinental seas in middle and high lat.i.tudes, glaciation might not have resulted. In the Pleistocene, however, terrestrial conditions permitted glaciation, and therefore the supposed increase in storminess caused great ice sheets.
The conditions which prevail at times of increased storminess have been discussed in detail in _Earth and Sun_. Those which apparently brought on glaciation seem to have acted as follows: In the first place the storminess lowered the temperature of the earth"s surface in several ways. The most important of these was the rapid upward convection in the centers of cyclonic storms whereby abundant heat was carried to high levels where most of it was radiated away into s.p.a.ce. The marked increase in the number of tropical cyclones which accompanies increased solar activity was probably important in this respect. Such cyclones carry vast quant.i.ties of heat and moisture out of the tropics. The moisture, to be sure, liberates heat upon condensing, but as condensation occurs above the earth"s surface, much of the heat escapes into s.p.a.ce. Another reason for low temperature was that under the influence of the supposedly numerous storms of Pleistocene times evaporation over the oceans must have increased. This is largely because the velocity of the winds is relatively great when storms are strong and such winds are powerful agents of evaporation. But evaporation requires heat, and hence the strong winds lower the temperature.[B]
The second great condition which enabled increased storminess to bring on glaciation was the location of the storm tracks. Kullmer"s maps, as ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 2, suggest that a great increase in solar activity, such as is postulated in the Pleistocene, might shift the main storm track poleward even more than it is shifted by the milder solar changes during the twelve-year sunspot cycle. If this is so, the main track would tend to cross North America through the middle of Canada instead of near the southern border. Thus there would be an increase in precipitation in about the lat.i.tude of the Keewatin and Labradorean centers of glaciation. From what is known of storm tracks in Europe, the main increase in the intensity of storms would probably center in Scandinavia. Fig. 3 in Chapter V bears this out. That figure, it will be recalled, shows what happens to precipitation when solar activity is increasing. A high rate of precipitation is especially marked in the boreal storm track, that is, in the northern United States, southern Canada, and northwestern Europe.
Another important condition in bringing on glaciation would be the fact that when storms are numerous the total precipitation appears to increase in spite of the slightly lower temperature. This is largely because of the greater evaporation. The excessive evaporation arises partly from the rapidity of the winds, as already stated, and partly from the fact that in areas where the air is clear the sun would presumably be able to act more effectively than now. It would do so because at times of abundant sunspots the sun in our own day has a higher solar constant than at times of milder activity. Our whole hypothesis is based on the supposition that what now happens at times of many sunspots was intensified in glacial periods.
A fourth condition which would cause glaciation to result from great solar activity would be the fact that the portion of the yearly precipitation falling as snow would increase, while the proportion of rain would diminish in the main storm track. This would arise partly because the storms would be located farther north than now, and partly because of the diminution in temperature due to the increased convection. The snow in itself would still further lower the temperature, for snow is an excellent reflector of sunlight. The increased cloudiness which would accompany the more abundant storms would also cause an unusually great reflection of the sunlight and still further lower the temperature. Thus at times of many sunspots a strong tendency toward the acc.u.mulation of snow would arise from the rapid convection and consequent low temperature, from the northern location of storms, from the increased evaporation and precipitation, from the larger percentage of snowy rather than rainy precipitation, and from the great loss of heat due to reflection from clouds and snow.
If events at the beginning of the last glacial period took place in accordance with the cyclonic hypothesis, as outlined above, one of the inevitable results would be the production of snowfields. The places where snow would acc.u.mulate in special quant.i.ties would be central Canada, the Labrador plateau, and Scandinavia, as well as certain mountain regions. As soon as a snowfield became somewhat extensive, it would begin to produce striking climatic alterations in addition to those to which it owed its origin.[41] For example, within a snowfield the summers remain relatively cold. Hence such a field is likely to be an area of high pressure at all seasons. The fact that the snowfield is always a place of relatively high pressure results in outblowing surface winds except when these are temporarily overcome by the pa.s.sage of strong cyclonic storms. The storms, however, tend to be concentrated near the margins of the ice throughout the year instead of following different paths in each of the four seasons. This is partly because cyclonic lows always avoid places of high pressure and are thus pushed out of the areas where permanent snow has acc.u.mulated. On the other hand, at times of many sunspots, as Kullmer has shown, the main storm track tends to be drawn poleward, perhaps by electrical conditions.
Hence when a snowfield is present in the north, the lows, instead of migrating much farther north in summer than in winter, as they now do, would merely crowd on to the snowfield a little farther in summer than in winter. Thus the heavy precipitation which is usual in humid climates near the centers of lows would take place near the advancing margin of the snowfield and cause the field to expand still farther southward.
The tendency toward the acc.u.mulation of snow on the margins of the snowfields would be intensified not only by the actual storms themselves, but by other conditions. For example, the coldness of the snow would tend to cause prompt condensation of the moisture brought by the winds that blow toward the storm centers from low lat.i.tudes. Again, in spite of the general dryness of the air over a snowfield, the lower air contains some moisture due to evaporation from the snow by day during the clear sunny weather of anti-cyclones or highs. Where this is sufficient, the cold surface of the snowfields tends to produce a frozen fog whenever the snowfield is cooled by radiation, as happens at night and during the pa.s.sage of highs. Such a frozen fog is an effective reflector of solar radiation. Moreover, because ice has only half the specific heat of water, and is much more transparent to heat, such a "radiation fog" composed of ice crystals is a much less effective retainer of heat than clouds or fog made of unfrozen water particles.
Shallow fogs of this type are described by several polar expeditions.
They clearly r.e.t.a.r.d the melting of the snow and thus help the icefield to grow.
For all these reasons, so long as storminess remained great, the Pleistocene snowfields, according to the solar hypothesis, must have deepened and expanded. In due time some of the snow was converted into glacial ice. When that occurred, the growth of the snowfield as well as of the ice cap must have been accelerated by glacial movement. Under such circ.u.mstances, as the ice crowded southward toward the source of the moisture by which it grew, the area of high pressure produced by its low temperature would expand. This would force the storm track southward in spite of the contrary tendency due to the sun. When the ice sheet had become very extensive, the track would be crowded relatively near to the northern margin of the trade-wind belt. Indeed, the Pleistocene ice sheets, at the time of their maximum extension, reached almost as far south as the lat.i.tude now marking the northern limit of the trade-wind belt in summer. As the storm track with its frequent low pressure and the subtropical belt with its high pressure were forced nearer and nearer together, the barometric gradient between the two presumably became greater, winds became stronger, and the storms more intense.
This zonal crowding would be of special importance in summer, at which time it would also be most p.r.o.nounced. In the first place, the storms would be crowded far upon the ice cap which would then be protected from the sun by a cover of fog and cloud more fully than at any other season.
Furthermore, the close approach of the trade-wind belt to the storm belt would result in a great increase in the amount of moisture drawn from the belt of evaporation which the trade winds dominate. In the trade-wind belt, clear skies and high temperature make evaporation especially rapid. Indeed, in spite of the vast deserts it is probable that more than three-fourths of the total evaporation now taking place on the earth occurs in the belt of trades, an area which includes about one-half of the earth"s surface.
The agency which could produce this increased drawing northward of moisture from the trade-wind belt would be the winds blowing into the lows. According to the cyclonic hypothesis, many of these lows would be so strong that they would temporarily break down the subtropical belt of high pressure which now usually prevails between the trades and the zone of westerly winds. This belt is even now often broken by tropical cyclones. If the storms of more northerly regions temporarily destroyed the subtropical high-pressure belt, even though they still remained on its northern side, they would divert part of the trade winds. Hence the air which now is carried obliquely equatorward by those winds would be carried spirally northward into the cyclonic lows. Precipitation in the storm track on the margin of the relatively cold ice sheet would thus be much increased, for most winds from low lat.i.tudes carry abundant moisture. Such a diversion of moisture from low lat.i.tudes probably explains the deficiency of precipitation along the heat equator at times of solar activity, as shown in Fig. 3. Taken as a whole, the summer conditions, according to the cyclonic hypothesis, would be such that increased evaporation in low lat.i.tudes would cooperate with increased storminess, cloudiness, and fog in higher lat.i.tudes to preserve and increase the acc.u.mulation of ice upon the borders of the ice sheet. The greater the storminess, the more this would be true and the more the ice sheet would be able to hold its own against melting in summer. Such a combination of precipitation and of protection from the sun is especially important if an ice sheet is to grow.
The meteorologist needs no geologic evidence that the storm track was shoved equatorward by the growth of the ice sheet, for he observes a similar shifting whenever a winter"s snow cap occupies part of the normal storm tract. The geologist, however, may welcome geologic evidence that such an extreme shift of the storm track actually occurred during the Pleistocene. Harmer, in 1901, first pointed out the evidence which was repeated with approval by Wright of the Ireland Geological Survey in 1914.[42] According to these authorities, numerous boulders of a distinctive chalk were deposited by Pleistocene icebergs along the coast of Ireland. Their distribution shows that at the time of maximum glaciation the strong winds along the south coast of Ireland were from the northeast while today they are from the southwest. Such a reversal could apparently be produced only by a southward shift of the center of the main storm track from its present position in northern Ireland, Scotland, and Norway to a position across northern France, central Germany, and middle Russia. This would mean that while now the centers of the lows commonly move northeastward a short distance north of southern Ireland, they formerly moved eastward a short distance south of Ireland. It will be recalled that in the northern hemisphere the winds spiral into a low counter-clockwise and that they are strongest near the center. When the centers pa.s.s not far north of a given point, the strong winds therefore blow from the west or southwest, while when the centers pa.s.s just south of that point, the strong winds come from the east or northeast.
In addition to the consequences of the crowding of the storm track toward the trade-wind belt, several other conditions presumably operated to favor the growth of the ice sheet. For example, the lowering of the sea level by the removal of water to form the snowfields and glaciers interfered with warm currents. It also increased the rate of erosion, for it was equivalent to an uplift of all the land. One consequence of erosion and weathering was presumably a diminution of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for although the ice covered perhaps a tenth of the lands and interfered with carbonation to that extent, the removal of large quant.i.ties of soil by accelerated erosion on the other nine-tenths perhaps more than counterbalanced the protective effect of the ice. At the same time, the general lowering of the temperature of the ocean as well as the lands increased the ocean"s capacity for carbon dioxide and thus facilitated absorption. At a temperature of 50F. water absorbs 32 per cent more carbon dioxide than at 68. The high waves produced by the severe storms must have had a similar effect on a small scale. Thus the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was presumably diminished. Of less significance than these changes in the lands and the air, but perhaps not negligible, was the increased salinity of the ocean which accompanied the removal of water to form snow, and the increase of the dissolved mineral load of the rejuvenated streams. Increased salinity slows up the deep-sea circulation, as we shall see in a later chapter. This increases the contrasts from zone to zone.
At times of great solar activity the agencies mentioned above would apparently cooperate to cause an advance of ice sheets into lower lat.i.tudes. The degree of solar activity would have much to do with the final extent of the ice sheets. Nevertheless, certain terrestrial conditions would tend to set limits beyond which the ice would not greatly advance unless the storminess were extraordinarily severe. The most obvious of these conditions is the location of oceans and of deserts or semi-arid regions. The southwestward advance of the European ice sheet and the southeastward advance of the Labradorean sheet in America were stopped by the Atlantic. The semi-aridity of the Great Plains, produced by their position in the lee of the Rocky Mountains, stopped the advance of the Keewatin ice sheet toward the southwest. The advance of the European ice sheet southeast seems to have been stopped for similar reasons. The cessation of the advance would be brought about in such an area not alone by the light precipitation and abundant sunshine, but by the dryness of the air, and also by the power of dust to absorb the sun"s heat. Much dust would presumably be drawn in from the dry regions by pa.s.sing cyclonic storms and would be scattered over the ice.
The advance of the ice is also slowed up by a rugged topography, as among the Appalachians in northern Pennsylvania. Such a topography besides opposing a physical obstruction to the movement of the ice provides bare south-facing slopes which the sun warms effectively. Such warm slopes are unfavorable to glacial advance. The rugged topography was perhaps quite as effective as the alt.i.tude of the Appalachians in causing the conspicuous northward dent in the glacial margin in Pennsylvania. Where glaciers lie in mountain valleys the advance beyond a certain point is often interfered with by the deployment of the ice at the mouths of gorges. Evaporation and melting are more rapid where a glacier is broad and thin than where it is narrow and thick, as in a gorge. Again, where the topography or the location of oceans or dry areas causes the glacial lobes to be long and narrow, the elongation of the lobe is apparently checked in several ways. Toward the end of the lobe, melting and evaporation increase rapidly because the planetary westerly winds are more likely to overcome the glacial winds and sweep across a long, narrow lobe than across a broad one. As they cross the lobe, they accelerate evaporation, and probably lessen cloudiness, with a consequent augmentation of melting. Moreover, although lows rarely cross a broad ice sheet, they do cross a narrow lobe. For example, Nansen records that strong lows occasionally cross the narrow southern part of the Greenland ice sheet. The longer the lobe, the more likely it is that lows will cross it, instead of following its margin. Lows which cross a lobe do not yield so much snow to the tip as do those which follow the margin. Hence elongation is r.e.t.a.r.ded and finally stopped even without a change in the earth"s general climate.
Because of these various reasons the advances of the ice during the several epochs of a glacial period might be approximately equal, even if the durations of the periods of storminess and low temperature were different. Indeed, they might be sub-equal, even if the periods differed in intensity as well as length. Differences in the periods would apparently be manifested less in the extent of the ice than in the depth of glacial erosion and in the thickness of the terminal moraines, outwash plains, and other glacial or glacio-fluvial formations.
Having completed the consideration of the conditions leading to the advance of the ice, let us now consider the condition of North America at the time of maximum glaciation.[43] Over an area of nearly four million square miles, occupying practically all the northern half of the continent and part of the southern half, as appears in Fig. 6, the surface was a monotonous and almost level plain of ice covered with snow. When viewed from a high alt.i.tude, all parts except the margins must have presented a uniformly white and sparkling appearance. Along the margins, however, except to the north, the whiteness was irregular, for the view must have included not only fresh snow, but moving clouds and dirty snow or ice. Along the borders where melting was in progress there was presumably more or less spottedness due to morainal material or glacial debris brought to the surface by ice shearage and wastage.
Along the dry southwestern border it is also possible that there were numerous dark spots due to dust blown onto the ice by the wind.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fig. 6. Distribution of Pleistocene ice sheets._ (_After Schuchert._)]
The great white sheet with its ragged border was roughly circular in form, with its center in central Canada. Yet there were many departures from a perfectly circular form. Some were due to the oceans, for, except in northern Alaska, the ice extended into the ocean all the way from New Jersey around by the north to Washington. On the south, topographic conditions made the margin depart from a simple arc. From New Jersey to Ohio it swung northward. In the Mississippi Valley it reached far south; indeed most of the broad wedge between the Ohio and the Missouri rivers was occupied by ice. From lat.i.tude 37 near the junction of the Missouri and the Mississippi, however, the ice margin extended almost due north along the Missouri to central North Dakota. It then stretched westward to the Rockies. Farther west lowland glaciation was abundant as far south as western Washington. In the Rockies, the Cascades, and the Sierra Nevadas glaciation was common as far south as Colorado and southern California, respectively, and snowfields were doubtless extensive enough to make these ranges ribbons of white. Between these lofty ranges lay a great unglaciated region, but even in the Great Basin itself, in spite of its present aridity, certain ranges carried glaciers, while great lakes expanded widely.
In this vast field of snow the glacial ice slowly crept outward, possibly at an average speed of half a foot a day, but varying from almost nothing in winter at the north, to several feet a day in summer at the south.[44] The force which caused the movement was the presence of the ice piled up not far from the margins. Almost certainly, however, there was no great dome from the center in Canada outward, as some early writers a.s.sumed. Such a dome would require that the ice be many thousands of feet thick near its center. This is impossible because of the fact that ice is more voluminous than water (about 9 per cent near the freezing point). Hence when subjected to sufficient pressure it changes to the liquid form. As friction and internal heat tend to keep the bottom of a glacier warm, even in cold regions, the probabilities are that only under very special conditions was a continental ice sheet much thicker than about 2500 feet. In Antarctica, where the temperature is much lower than was probably attained in the United States, the ice sheet is nearly level, several expeditions having traveled hundreds of miles with practically no change in alt.i.tude. In Shackleton"s trip almost to the South Pole, he encountered a general rise of 3000 feet in 1200 miles. Mountains, however, projected through the ice even near the pole and the geologists conclude that the ice is not very thick even at the world"s coldest point, the South Pole.
Along the margin of the ice there were two sorts of movement, much more rapid than the slow creep of the ice. One was produced by the outward drift of snow carried by the outblowing dry winds and the other and more important was due to the pa.s.sage of cyclonic storms. Along the border of the ice sheet, except at the north, storm presumably closely followed storm. Their movement, we judge, was relatively slow until near the southern end of the Mississippi lobe, but when this point was pa.s.sed they moved much more rapidly, for then they could go toward instead of away from the far northern path which the sun prescribes when solar activity is great. The storms brought much snow to the icefield, perhaps sometimes in favored places as much as the hundred feet a year which is recorded for some winters in the Sierras at present. Even the unglaciated intermontane Great Basin presumably received considerable precipitation, perhaps twice as much as its present scanty supply. The rainfall was enough to support many lakes, one of which was ten times as large as Great Salt Lake; and gra.s.s was doubtless abundant upon many slopes which are now dry and barren. The relatively heavy precipitation in the Great Basin was probably due primarily to the increased number of storms, but may also have been much influenced by their slow eastward movement. The lows presumably moved slowly in that general region not only because they were r.e.t.a.r.ded and turned from their normal path by the cold ice to the east, but because during the summer the area between the Sierra snowfields on the west and the Rocky Mountain and Mississippi Valley snowfields on the east was relatively warm. Hence it was normally a place of low pressure and therefore of inblowing winds. Slow-moving lows are much more effective than fast-moving ones in drawing moisture northwestward from the Gulf of Mexico, for they give the moisture more time to move spirally first northeast, under the influence of the normal southwesterly winds, then northwest and finally southwest as it approaches the storm center. In the case of the present lows, before much moisture-laden air can describe such a circuit, first eastward and then westward, the storm center has nearly always moved eastward across the Rockies and even across the Great Plains. A result of this is the regular decrease in precipitation northward, northwestward, and westward from the Gulf of Mexico.
Along the part of the glacial margins where for more than 3000 miles the North American ice entered the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, myriads of great blocks broke off and floated away as stately icebergs, to scatter boulders far over the ocean floor and to melt in warmer climes.
Where the margin lay upon the lands numerous streams issued from beneath the ice, milk-white with rock flour, and built up great outwash plains and valley trains of gravel and sand. Here and there, just beyond the ice, marginal lakes of strange shapes occupied valleys which had been dammed by the advancing ice. In many of them the water level rose until it reached some low point in the divide and then overflowed, forming rapids and waterfalls. Indeed, many of the waterfalls of the eastern United States and Canada were formed in just this way and not a few streams now occupy courses through ridges instead of parallel to them, as in pre-glacial times.
In the zone to the south of the continental ice sheet, the plant and animal life of boreal, cool temperate, and warm temperate regions commingled curiously. Heather and Arctic willow crowded out elm and oak; musk ox, hairy mammoth, and marmot contested with deer, chipmunk, and skunk for a chance to live. Near the ice on slopes exposed to the cold glacial gales, the immigrant boreal species were dominant, but not far away in more protected areas the species that had formerly lived there held their own. In Europe during the last two advances of the great ice sheet the caveman also struggled with fierce animals and a fiercer climate to maintain life in an area whose habitability had long been decreasing.