The London, Edinburgh and Dublin philosophical magazine and journal of science . h centuryor in the 18th, the result always is a similar curve with iden-tically the same irregularities. This proves plainly that thesecannot be accidental, cannot be owing to an insufficientnumber of observations, or to errors of observation. There-fore here again it is not so much the phenomenon as a wholewhich is the most interesting, but the anomalies, as repre-sented by the divergencies from the smooth curve, by thelarge amount of secondary maxima and minima. That thetemperature rapidly rises in the second ha
The London, Edinburgh and Dublin philosophical magazine and journal of science . h centuryor in the 18th, the result always is a similar curve with iden-tically the same irregularities. This proves plainly that thesecannot be accidental, cannot be owing to an insufficientnumber of observations, or to errors of observation. There-fore here again it is not so much the phenomenon as a wholewhich is the most interesting, but the anomalies, as repre-sented by the divergencies from the smooth curve, by thelarge amount of secondary maxima and minima. That thetemperature rapidly rises in the second half of January andfalls again in February, that the same phenomenon is re-peated in the end of February, is an apparent fact, and mustnot be smoothed away; and it will be, I think, the task formeteorologists to investigate what the cause of such anomaliesmay be. And to a certain extent I think the method hereput forward affords some clue to these causes. Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 45. No. 276. May 1898. 2 I 462 Dr. van Rijckevorsel on the Temperature of Europe. b£ W .§ s 3 C cs M. %s Dr. van Rijckevorsel on the Temperature of Europe. 463 I think also that these curves show that it is not reallynecessary to have such a very large number of years tocalculate the normal temperatures with if they are wellmanipulated. In this diagram, for instance, the curve forKonigsberg is the result of 46 years observations, that forCatania of only 20 years; and you will see that the result isquite as satisfactory. I have even got curves from only tenyears observations which show exactly the same peculiaritiesas others. Of course a larger number of years cannot fail tomake the normals still better. Suppose we had a series oftwo or three centuries, it is very probable that minor ano-malies would show themselves which might be quite as real,quite as permanent as the larger ones I am able to pointout now; we might be able then to take the mean valuesdirectly as normal temperatures without any smoothing.
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