Remarks on the Paper by TR Visvanathan Entitled "On Bowen's Hypothesis"

Abstract

Visvanathan's paper (1965) has reopened the controversial question of rainfall calendaricities that has stimulated so much research and discussion since the paper by Bowen (1953). Visvanathan's suggestion that anomalous rainfall at Sydney results from the joint effects associated with the lunar month and the calendar date is an interesting one, and depends upon the conclusion that the correlations between the curves of his Figures 2(b), 2(c), and 2(d) are significant. Although these curves are based on data that have been smoothed, thus introducing serial correlation into them, an appropriate significance test can be made which does in fact show that the conclusions are valid. However, his findings led the writer to examine the Sydney data from another point of view, and this investigation led to results giving a different interpretation from that given by Visvanathan.