Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 1 of 2): with scientific elucidationsHumboldt, Alexander von
Science
Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 1 of 2): with scientific elucidations
Humboldt, Alexander von
Physical geography; Plant morphology; Science; South America -- Description and travel
The statement so often repeated, although unsupported by any
thermometric measurements, that since the first European settlements
in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the eradication of many
forests on both sides of the Alleghanies had rendered the climate more
equable, (_i. e._, milder in winter and cooler in summer), is now
generally doubted or disbelieved. Series of trustworthy thermometric
observations in the United States hardly extend so far back as 78
years. We see in the Philadelphia observations, that from 1771 to 1824,
the mean annual temperature has hardly increased 1°.2 Reaumur, (or 2°.8
Fahrenheit),--a difference which is attributed to the increased size of
the town, to its greater population, and to the numerous steam-engines.
The difference may possibly be merely accidental, for I find in the
same period an increase of mean winter cold, amounting to 0°.9 Reaumur,
or 2° Fahrenheit; the three other seasons had become somewhat warmer.
Three-and-thirty years’ observations at Salem in Massachusetts shew
no alteration at all: the annual means oscillate, within a degree
of Fahrenheit, about the mean of the whole number of years; and the
winters of Salem, instead of having become milder, as supposed from the
destruction of the forests in the course of the thirty-three years,
have become colder by 1°.8 Reaumur, or 4° Fahrenheit. (Forry, p. 97,
101, and 107.)
As the east coast of the United States is comparable in respect to
mean annual temperature in equal latitudes to the Siberian and Chinese
coasts of the old continent, so also the west coasts of Europe and
America have been very properly compared together. I will only take
a few examples from the western region on the shores of the Pacific,
for two of which (Sitka in Russian America, and Fort George, in the
same latitudes respectively as Gottenburg and Geneva) I am indebted
to Admiral Lütke’s voyage of circumnavigation. Iluluk and Danzig are
nearly on the same parallel, and although the mean temperature of
Iluluk, owing to its insular climate and to a cold sea-current, is
somewhat lower than that of Danzig, yet the winter temperature of the
American station is milder than that of the port on the Baltic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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