Some people speculate that increasing smog will cause our atmosphere to capture and retain more solar heat, gradually melting the world’s icecaps. But I believe smog and other factors, such as changing carbon dioxide content and volcanic dust, will prove only marginal in their effects on our climatic future.
Dr. Hurd C. Willett, Professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests the answer. Dr. Willett, one of our staff affiliates this year, has shown us how cyclic changes in the climate closely parallel the cyclic changes in sunspot activity—the manifestations of powerful electrical energy discharges from the sun.* We now feel confident that our investigations here back up the solar-climate theory of weather cycles. Sunspots have been diligently recorded for well over 200 years. We find that glacier fluctuations over these past two centuries show a tantalizing correlation, taking into account the glaciers’ flow lag, with sun storms and temperature trends.
