Introductory remarks

Abstract

The search for periodic or quasi-periodic variations in the solar constant through the analysis of climatic and meterological data has proved elusive. The reason is evident: the atmosphere is a wet gas with much energy stored as latent heat and is in complex interaction dynamically and thermally with the oceans and land areas. This confronts the investigator with a hydrodynamic problem of awesome difficulty and has hitherto frustrated attempts at weather prediction over more than a few days. The instabilities, what we call the weather, cause not only day-to-day but also year-to-year variations so great that many experts have concluded that these would have completely masked possible small changes due to fluctuations of the energy input from the Sun. Yet, as the seasonal changes of solar energy falling on each hemisphere result in such obvious effects, it should not be impossible to detect in the climatic records much smaller changes in the total global input of heat energy into the atmosphere, especially if these are cyclical, by integrating out short-term fluctuations.