Abstract
IN Mr. W. N. Shaw's paper “On the Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Temperature in the British Isles” (Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. lxix., pp. 61-85), it is stated that it seems “probable that the ocean plays a paramount part in the causation of the second-order temperature effect which we experience in these islands. … Whether this variation of the temperature of the water which surrounds these islands is the cause of the atmospheric second-order variation, or whether it is only another effect of the same fundamental cause, does not appear, but in view of the fact that the marked second-order effect is not seen at Continental stations, it would seem not unlikely that the ocean temperature is the immediate cause of our second-order periodic temperature variation. … All the successive stages of temperature change are delayed by the effect of the sea. … The effect of the sea is to delay the seasons.” Of course, it is a very old belief that the vicinity pf the sea affects the temperature of a climate, moderating the heat of summer and the cold of winter, but the ideas on the subject have been of the usual vague popular character. What is curious is that it has taken so long to initiate some investigation designed to discover what may be the nature of the relationship between the temperature of the sea and that of the air over the adjacent land. Although the North Atlantic is the most frequented of the great oceans, very little has thus far been accomplished in discussing it: variations of temperature month by month throughout the year indeed, the region between the 50th and 60th parallels, from our islands across to Labrador, has been almost wholly neglected. Some years ago, the Meteorological Office published mean results for four months; the Deutsche Seewarte has made a separate discussion of each of a number of 10° squares; and the Copenhagen Institute annually supplies information for the far north, mainly on the routes from Denmark to Iceland and Greenland. These are the principal contributions to our knowledge of Atlantic sea temperature.
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Sea Temperature and Shore Climate . Nature 66, 116–117 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/066116a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/066116a0