3. W. H. Hobbs: The Rôle of the Glacial Anticyclone in the Air Circulation of the Globe; Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., Vol. 54, 1915, pp. 185-225.]
[Footnote 42: W. B. Wright: The Quaternary Ice Age, 1914, p. 100.]
[Footnote 43: The description of the distribution of the ice sheet is based on T. C. Chamberlin's wall map of North America at the maximum of glaciation, 1913.]
[Footnote 44: Chamberlin and Salisbury: Geology, 1906, Vol. 3, and W. H. Hobbs: Characteristics of Existing Glaciers, 1911.]
[Footnote 45: S. S. Visher: The Geography of South Dakota; S. D. Geol. Surv., 1918.]
Having outlined in general terms the coming of the ice sheets and their disappearance, we are now ready to discuss certain problems of compelling climatic interest. The discussion will be grouped under five heads: (I) the localization of glaciation; (II) the sudden coming of glaciation; (III) peculiar variations in the height of the snow line and of glaciation; (IV) lakes and other evidences of humidity in unglaciated regions during the glacial epochs; (V) glaciation at sea level and in low latitudes in the Permian and Proterozoic eras. The discussion of perhaps the most difficult of all climatic problems of glaciation, that of the succession of cold glacial and mild inter-glacial epochs, has been postponed to the next to the final chapter of this book. It cannot be properly considered until we take up the history of solar disturbances.
I. The first problem, the localization of the ice sheets, arises from the fact that in both the Pleistocene and the Permian periods glaciation was remarkably limited. In neither period were all parts of high latitudes glaciated; yet in both cases glaciation occurred in large regions in lower latitudes. Many explanations of this localization have been offered, but most are entirely inadequate. Even hypotheses with something of proven worth, such as those of variations in volcanic dust and in atmospheric carbon dioxide, fail to account for localization. The cyclonic form of the solar hypothesis, however, seems to afford a satisfactory explanation.
The distribution of the ice in the last glacial period is well known, and is shown in Fig. 6. Four-fifths of the ice-covered area, which was eight million square miles, more or less, was near the borders of the North Atlantic in eastern North America and northwestern Europe. The ice spread out from two great centers in North America, the Labradorean east of Hudson Bay, and the Keewatin west of the bay. There were also many glaciers in the western mountains, especially in Canada, while subordinate centers occurred in Newfoundland, the Adirondacks, and the White Mountains. The main ice sheet at its maximum extension reached as far south as latitude 39° in Kansas and Kentucky, and 37° in Illinois. Huge boulders were transferred more than one thousand miles from their source in Canada. The northward extension was somewhat less. Indeed, the northern margin of the continent was apparently relatively little glaciated and much of Alaska unglaciated. Why should northern Kentucky be glaciated when northern Alaska was not?