Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody can do much about it even today. Short-range forecasting has improved enormously in recent years, even though squalls occur on days when the weatherman insists the precipitation probability is near zero. And despite great advances in techniques and technology, the discipline of climatology—the study of long-range trends in weather—is still an inexact science, to say the least. Climatologists still disagree on whether earth's long-range outlook is another ice age, which could bring mass starvation and fuel shortages, or a warming trend, which could melt the polar icecaps and flood coastal cities.
In fact, scientists have been unable to explain the basic causes of the bizarre weather that afflicted much of the world this summer. Record rains and floods soaked some areas, while droughts parched others, with potentially serious social, economic and political effects. Some examples:
WESTERN EUROPE has recorded one of the hottest, dryest summers in a century. City dwellers have sweltered through abnormally hot days. Farmers in England, northern France, Belgium, northern Italy and West Germany went months without rain, while their fields dried out and their crops shriveled. "My potatoes that should be fist-sized are as big as my thumb," complained a farmer near the small Bavarian village of Hersbruck. "That's what this cursed weather has done." The drought has also turned what promised to be a record British grain harvest into a disaster, lowering harvest expectations from 17.5 million tons to an anticipated 13.8 million. The grain shortage, in turn, is expected to drive the price of animal feed up by some 20%, thus raising the price of beef. Agricultural losses in Germany could be as much as $2 billion.
The prolonged dry spell has also affected transportation. The levels of some German rivers and French canals have dropped so low that barges are carrying reduced loads in order to ride higher in the water. It has also hit hard at the Continent's power systems. With many rivers flowing at only a third of their normal volume and hydroelectric output cut, French utilities have had to burn some 2 million extra tons of oil to meet customer demands for power. As the drought continued in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, rains began to fall in Western Europe—too little and too late to be of much help.
AFRICA has been struck by localized droughts in Tanzania, Kenya and in the northern parts of heavily populated Nigeria and Ghana. Near normal rains in the Sahel—the southern edge of the Sahara, where as many as half a million died in the great 1972-74 drought—have brought adequate harvests, but the moisture may prove to be a mixed blessing. The rainfall spawned an almost biblical plague of rats, locusts and caterpillars in Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Upper Volta. Millions of gerbils, which U.S. children often keep as pets, are loose on the land in Niger, devouring everything in sight.
ASIA, on the other hand, has seen the return of the monsoons in much of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which is moving toward self-sufficiency in food production. Bumper rice crops are expected in Thailand and Taiwan this year.