The Influence of the Winds upon Climate during the Pleistocene Epoch: a Palæometeorological Explanation of some Geological Problems

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Abstract
I. Introductory The progress of meteorological science during recent years has given us much information as to the causes of the constant, and to a superficial observer the apparently capricious, changes of weather which obtain over certain portions of the earth's surface. We understand now, not only why, in Great Britain for example, one day is dry or cold, and the next rainy or warm; but also why the general character of the seasons often differs so widely from the normal, the climate of spring being experienced at one time in January, and the conditions of winter in May or June. The scientific meteorologist, equally with the unlettered peasant, still looks, however, to the vane on the church-tower for his first explanation of anomalous weather, though the meteorologist shows us that the direction of the winds is due to the relative position, and to the form and alignment, of areas of high and low barometric pressure. The winds must necessarily blow, as is well known, in a direction more or less parallel to the isobaric lines, moving in the Northern Hemisphere outward from, and round the centre of, an anticyclone in the direction of the hands of a watch, and towards and round a cyclone in the opposite direction. To use the old formula (Buys Ballot's law), ‘if you stand with your back to the wind, you have the higher barometer on your right hand.’ The comparatively genial climate of Great Britain during the winter is attributed to the Gulf

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