Abstract
MANY parts of Australia lie on the marginal zone in which the rainfall is sufficient in good years but in bad years drops below the level required to maintain the pastures. Disastrous droughts have occurred from time to time in the past, and may be expected to recur in the future, but hitherto no satisfactory method of forecasting them has been found. Mr. Inigo Jones, director of the Bureau of Seasonal Forecasting in Brisbane, has been investigating the problem, and as a basis for study, he has collected all the available long records of rainfall in Queensland, including 159 stations, which he has published in the form of monthly tables. The lines on which Mr. Inigo Jones is attacking the problem of foretelling these droughts are set out in another pamphlet, entitled “Seasonal forecasting” (Brisbane, 1932). He believes that the weather of Australia is dominated by solar influences, but that these cannot be expressed simply and directly by the sunspot curve. In some way the solar activity is governed by the revolutions of the planets, resulting in a multiplicity of cycles, but the author's ideas on the subject are vague. This would not matter so much if the meteorological data were handled scientifically, but he proceeds to “prove” this hypothesis by picking out the occasions on which the facts agree, more or less, with the theory. Perhaps a more thorough test is now in progress, based on the extensive rainfall data for Queensland referred to above. It may be remarked that one result of the planetary hypothesis is that the main sunspot cycle should be the period of Jupiter, 11.86 years, but the meteorological evidence is almost wholly in favour of the shorter cycle of just over 11 years, as shown, for example, in the fluctuations of level of Lake George in Australia (NATURE, 112, 918, Dec. 22, 1923).
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Forecasting Rainfall in Queensland. Nature 132, 345 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132345a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132345a0