The Australian long-range weather forecaster Inigo Owen Jones
(1872-1954) is well written into 20th century folklore in the
Australian bush. His forecasts, issued from 1925 to his death, were
highly regarded by many Australian farmers, the general public and some
of the media. His theory is based on the idea that the solar system is a
vast electromagnetic body that is controlled by the magnetic fields of
the planets. Jupiter
is 1300 times larger than the Earth and has 12 moons, and the rotation of the
vast orb takes ten times longer than Earth. This all combines to create a
magnetic field much greater than that of the Earth. Inigo Jones
discovered that when the major planets, e.g. Jupiter, moved towards the
point of celestial longitude known as eighteen hours of right ascension,
which points to the fixed star Vega, it caused sunspot minima. He also
found that on each such occasion there was a more or less severe drought
in eastern Australia. The working hypothesis from his observations is
that the seasons are controlled by the magnetic fields of the four major
planets and the Moon. There are longer droughts when there are more planets pointing towards Vega and floods when they are 180 degrees from Vega.
Droughts cancel out floods if the planets are opposite each other at
these points. Sunspot cycles are on average the same length as the cycle
of Jupiter. Around the globe it is possible to show that greater sunspot activity causes more precipitation. Put
simply, Inigo Jones believed
that cyclical variations in the activity of the Sun - visible as
sunspots - controlled the Earth’s climate, and that these
variations were themselves largely determined by the orbits of Moon,
Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. He
considered five planetary-solar cycles of 35 years, 36 years, 59 years,
71 years and 84 years, and on looking back at the Australian Growing
Season rainfall of 35, 36, 59, 71 and 84 years previously, he gained an
appreciation of the expected rainfall for the forecast season or year in
question.
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| Australian Rainfall Cycles |
If
one wants to know what the weather would be like on 1 January next
year, one would calculate the positions of the planets on that day and
then look back through the record of weather observations to a time when
the planetary positions were the same. If the locations of the planets
matched, then so would the weather – more or less. Or perhaps less than
more, for what seemed to set Jones apart from other weather prophets
were the levels of complexity he added to this basic cyclical system. It
is worth noting that to make predictions with this system one needs a
very, very long, unbroken series of weather observations. Jones was fond
of quoting the opinion of Queensland University’s professor of
mathematics that a full test of his theory could not be made without 300
years of data.
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| Inigo Owen Jones (1938): Why I build the Crohamhurst Observatory (HERE) |
