From the UK Telegraph – source link
The protective bubble around the sun that helps to shield the Earth from harmful interstellar radiation is shrinking and getting weaker, NASA scientists have warned.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:23AM BST 19 Oct 2008
New data has revealed that the heliosphere, the protective shield of energy that surrounds our solar system, has weakened by 25 per cent over the past decade and is now at it lowest level since the space race began 50 years ago.
Scientists are baffled at what could be causing the barrier to shrink in this way and are to launch mission to study the heliosphere.
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, will be launched from an aircraft on Sunday on a Pegasus rocket into an orbit 150,000 miles above the Earth where it will “listen” for the shock wave that forms as our solar system meets the interstellar radiation.
Dr Nathan Schwadron, co-investigator on the IBEX mission at Boston University, said: “The interstellar medium, which is part of the galaxy as a whole, is actually quite a harsh environment. There is a very high energy galactic radiation that is dangerous to living things.
“Around 90 per cent of the galactic cosmic radiation is deflected by our heliosphere, so the boundary protects us from this harsh galactic environment.”
The heliosphere is created by the solar wind, a combination of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields that emanate a more than a million miles an hour from the sun, meet the intergalactic gas that fills the gaps in space between solar systems.
At the boundary where they meet a shock wave is formed that deflects interstellar radiation around the solar system as it travels through the galaxy.
The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.
Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.
Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.
Dr David McComas, principal investigator on the IBEX mission, said: “It is a fascinating interaction that our sun has with the galaxy surrounding us. This million mile an hour wind inflates this protective bubble that keeps us safe from intergalactic cosmic rays.
“With less pressure on the inside, the interaction at the boundaries becomes weaker and the heliosphere as a whole gets smaller.”
If the heliosphere continues to weaken, scientists fear that the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the inner parts of our solar system, including Earth, will increase.
This could result in growing levels of disruption to electrical equipment, damage satellites and potentially even harm life on Earth.
But Dr McComas added that it was still unclear exactly what would happen if the heliosphere continued to weaken or what even what the timescale for changes in the heliosphere are.
He said: “There is no imminent danger, but it is hard to know what the future holds. Certainly if the solar wind pressure was to continue to go down and the heliosphere were to almost evaporate then we would be in this sea of galactic cosmic rays. That could have some large effects.
“It is likely that there are natural variations in solar wind pressure and over time it will either stabilise or start going back up.”
(hat tip to Dvid Gladstone)
nobwainer (19:09:40) :
Now you are talking.
————————————————————-
1. The Lockwood et al. [1999] reconstruction has been superceded, resolving the disagreement with Svalgaard and Cliver [2005]
While encouraging its one paper that is closer to yours and if i am not mistaken compares aa records…it wasnt clear to me what brought about their reconstruction?
There are only two groups in the world that have made serious inroads in this area, Mike Lockwood’s and our own. The story started back in 1977 when I suggested, based on the aa-index, that the solar magnetic field had doubled. In 1999 Lockwood brought the analysis up-to-date in a famous paper in Nature and confirmed the [actually a bit more than] doubling. It seemed then to be a solid result and was widely accepted. Because of the importance of the conclusion, a concerted effort was made by myself and colleagues to verify the constant calibration of the aa-index on which everything was based. Unfortunately, it turned out that the aa-index did not have constant calibration, but was too high before 1957. Fortunately, it was possible to quantify the error and correct the aa-index as well as constructing special indices [IHV and IDV] that have the two important properties:
1) anybody can readily calculate them from public data [no subjective judgement as for the aa-index]
2) in combination both the HMF and the solar wind speed can be determined from them.
The two papers that define the indices and show that aa is wrong are
http://www.leif.org/research/The%20IDV%20index%20-%20its%20derivation%20and%20use.pdf
and
http://www.leif.org/research/2007JA012437.pdf
Warning: this is heavy going, but there is no way around it [but see below before reading the papers].
Predictably, Lockwood put up a spirited fight, but was countered effectively by our response:
http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf
As a direct result of this, he and his group realized that their previous attempt was flawed and quietly abandoned their approach and instead used a variation of our method. The result was very close to what we found. [Their method-paper is still under review, but is solid]. Alex Rouillard from their group has kindly supplied us with their data, which we plotted in the McCracken Comment paper. So, the matter is settled [to use a dangerous – but in this case, correct – phrase].
2. The Solanki et al. reconstruction is not independent of Lockwood et al.
If it is proven that Solanki tweaked the model to agree with Lockwood’s earlier work then it would be one area McCracken would lose support.
If you read the Solanki papers you will find [as we quote] that they say that the model was constructed in order to account for Lockwood’s finding. In the sense that they showed that one could explain a doubling under certain assumptions about the Sun’s magnetic field. Their model was not tweaked. They simply showed that there was a combination of assumptions and adjustable parameters that could explain the doubling. But since the doubling didn’t happen in the first place, there is no need to try to find that set of assumptions that would explain it.
Are there other papers that support McCracken and what other 10Be studies have been done that might support McCracken?.
No, and in fact one of his other recent papers [with Caballero-Lopez] comes to a different result. The main figure is reproduced here on page 13. That paper is also a shorter and easier version of the IHV & IDV result than the original ones quoted above.
3. The McCracken 1426-2005 HMF reconstruction needs to be re-examined
You cast doubt on the 1933-1951 portion of McCrackens data but mainly disagree because it does not match your findings and Rouillard et al. This is much like point 1.
The point here is that our own and Rouillard’s findings are it. There are no other groups doing this. Some attempts by Clilverd and by Mursula have come close [and we reference those in our papers], but are flawed in various ways.
If this portion is found to be incorrect would that also negate the 1428-1930 section that also shows many dips and would that section need to be adjusted up in amplitude or would it remain?
One can ‘rescue’ McCracken’s paper by shifting the pre-1948 data upwards [just removing the jump ~1948], but he should redo the analysis and correctly this time.
You have perhaps showed some weaknesses in 2 papers that supported McCrackens paper but that does necessarily mean his paper is in error.
Yes it does. This is how science works: The determination of HMF by several independent methods and groups has reached the point where there is general agreement [among the workers in this area http://www.leif.org/research/Seminar-LMSAL.pdf ] to about 10%. McCracken [who did his work before this agreement was achieved] makes in a sense a prediction. He says, in effect: if my calibration of 10Be is correct, here is the HMF I would predict [or would follow from his data]. When the ‘consensus’ HMF determination became available, McCracken’s prediction was falsified, especially during the critical time 1935-1950 where we have very good geomagnetic data and everybody [in the business] agree, as we point out in section 3.
One of the problems with this whole thing is that it is lengthy and complex and therefore requires for its understanding a wider attention span than most people are willing to accord it.
Even this very post is above most people’s tolerance level, especially if the thesis expounded here is at variance with their views.
nobwainer (19:09:40) :
If this portion is found to be incorrect would that also negate the 1428-1930 section that also shows many dips and would that section need to be adjusted up in amplitude or would it remain?
I forgot to mention that the strange dips are due to volcanic activity that pump aerosols into the stratosphere where they interfere with the 10Be deposition. Some of the more important of the eruptions are shown on page 19 of http://www.leif.org/research/Seminar-LMSAL.pdf
Leif Svalgaard (20:28:53) :
nobwainer (19:09:40) :
Now you are talking.
That background information astounds me (dont doubt you). I am very surprised to hear the small amount of people involved in this research. If this was made plain in your comments paper it would definitely have more punch for those not quite “in the know”.
That extra information has me looking at your work in another light….but would like to see it backed up by a few more groups to test thoroughly.
I think Leif’s background information would be useful to a lot of people on this blog.
Perhaps Anthony could run a story on it?
nobwainer (21:20:54) :
That extra information has me looking at your work in another light….but would like to see it backed up by a few more groups to test thoroughly.
It is quite usual that the finer details are ‘known’ or ‘understood’ or ‘cared about’ by only a handful of people. The vast majority of scientists trust these few people to do ‘their thing’ so that most people can just assume that it is being done. Scientific trust is built on quality papers or reliable ‘service’ in the past. Any scientist can recognize a high-quality paper [or a low-quality one, for that matter] in any field. That ‘smell test’ takes about 10 seconds.
It is not likely that a ‘few more groups’ will test this more thoroughly, ever. Take the example of the aa-index. It is the work of a single person [whom I knew very well – we even co-authored papers] P-N Mayaud, and no-one has [or will] ever tried to duplicate his work. Why should one? it was already done, and there are all reasons to trust that Mayaud was an expert at his work [because he wrote meaningfully about it and explained it to people for decades]. Having said that, that does not exclude that one cannot do even better. The aa-index is based on two stations only and was a massive undertaking that no-one would even try today. But our computing power is so great that we can now do what Mayaud could not: incorporate data from dozens or hundreds of stations and that way obtain cross-checks and double-checks that simply were not feasible in his time [a scant 30 years ago], so we can do better and that lies behind the success of our new indices. The aa-index was a major advance and a lot of good science has flowed from it. What I and Lockwood were trying to do, was pushing the aa-index beyond what it could deliver, so a new approach was needed. Such is the progress of science.
Because of the political aspects of climate change the trust has gone out the window. In politics you don’t trust. You lie and cheat because the end justifies the means. We have a Danish proverb that says “a thief thinks everybody steals”. So, people transfer that to scientists and think that they lie and cheat as well, which for the largest part they don’t. The reason that cheating doesn’t work is very simple: Science is self-correcting, the bad stuff simply dies and is ignored and forgotten if it is wrong or not useful or predicts things that don’t happen.
In the small, scientists are people too and have the same foibles and flaws as everybody. They will try to block publication of contrary papers or steal each others ideas or mislead the public and all that, but this is all transitory. In the end, such antics are self-defeating, and no long-term harm comes of it [unless politicians try to use the bad science – Gore and Lysenkoism come to mind].
Perhaps Anthony could run a story on it?
I think that I have spouted it all over the place for months. In addition, such information is lengthy and involved and the reader soon suffers from overload. Plus that when such background information clashes with deeply held convictions, venom and attacks ensue. Such is the human condition. But I’m always willing to try to explain, the best I can, what the science is [as I see it – what else can one do?]. Often people forget that a lot of science is tentative and preliminary. A scientist can try to convey that by hedging with words like “it seems to me”, “there are indications that”, “the data suggests…”, etc, but then he is accused of using ‘weasel words’ and it is also very tedious to always have to qualify every sentence, so statements are made that are too strong on their face, and the public forgets that everything is implicitly qualified.
Gee, I thought I would just respond with a couple of lines, ah well …
As an example of the self-correcting nature of science I may want to use the example of TSI. Did you know that TSI is different on Fridays? Probably not; neither did I until yesterday:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE%20Friday%20Effect.pdf
This is a minor error and will be corrected [one may hope], but illustrates well that everything comes out eventually.
Leif
makes THAT data useless for refutation, but also for claiming the connection
Absolutely not. Low clouds at -30,-60 (the most dense band) is perfect except that jump and very well correlated globaly.
But I do, and this is textbook stuff
So you are confident there will not come another Svalgaard in a few years claiming the field has been stable, that the decline was caused by wrong methods 🙂
I’m reading “The field deflects the speeding particles toward Earth’s Poles”
Could a weakening magnetic field decrease the GCR in the arctic, or are only particles from the sun deflected?
lgl (08:19:07) :
Absolutely not. Low clouds at -30,-60 (the most dense band) is perfect except that jump and very well correlated globaly.
Correlated with what?
So you are confident there will not come another Svalgaard in a few years claiming the field has been stable, that the decline was caused by wrong methods
We have been able to measure the Earth’s magnetic field accurately for two hundred years. The result will not change. The great Gauss told us how to. You count the swings of a suspended magnets for a minute. The number of swings is a measure of the magnetic field strength: the fewer swings, the stronger field. People could count back then.
Could a weakening magnetic field decrease the GCR in the arctic, or are only particles from the sun deflected?
all charged particles no matter where they come from are deflected
lgl (08:19:07) :
Could a weakening magnetic field decrease the GCR in the arctic, or are only particles from the sun deflected?
A weaker field increases the GCR flux everywhere.
some background info:
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2007/06554/EGU2007-J-06554.pdf
Some time ago, Mr. Radun wrote about UV, Gamma rays etc. and the effect on phytoplankton as a function of declining magnetic field. Here is an alternative route: Oceans’ phytoplankton that takes apparently more then 50% of CO2 from the atmosphere, relies on iron for photosynthesis.
Is it possible that the oceans are entering an era where they are depleted of iron to a degree which might affect effectives of photosynthesis?
Has the reduction in the Earth’s magnetic field further altered iron balance in the oceans?
Somewhat OT, but don’t those dark patches on the EIT images of the sun at the SOHO page look ominous?
Fred Nieuwenhuis (10:57:26) :
Somewhat OT, but don’t those dark patches on the EIT images of the sun at the SOHO page look ominous?
Those are coronal holes from where most of the solar wind comes. Without such holes [they are dark simply because the material that was there has ended up in the solar wind which in turn protects against cosmic rays, etc. So they are good. But after all, it is Halloween, so a little scare is OK.
Thanks for the explanation. I haven’t seen them so pronouced before. But I have been only looking at the SOHO site for the past year or so.
Leif
Correlated with what?
With solar activity of course, I’ve linked this before: http://virakkraft.com/lowclouds-filer/slide0003_image003.jpg
all charged particles no matter where they come from are deflected
which should mean less GCR in the arctic> less clouds> warmer.
Most of the warming is at high latitudes, problem solved.
But in your next post you write “A weaker field increases the GCR flux everywhere” even if the paper concludes
“We have shown that CRII variations in these two regions are dominated by changes caused by the migration of the geomagnetic pole, which exceed those variations due to solar activity changes.” and
“We conclude that local effects in variations of the cosmic ray flux, which may dominate over the globally averaged changes in some locations, should be taken into account in long-term studies of solar-terrestrial relations.”
lgl (11:46:11) :
With solar activity of course, I’ve linked this before: http://virakkraft.com/lowclouds-filer/slide0003_image003.jpg
Except that the correlation breaks down after 2000, as most spurious correlations eventually do.
all charged particles no matter where they come from are deflected which should mean less GCR in the arctic> less clouds> warmer. Most of the warming is at high latitudes, problem solved.
I think you have this backwards: weaker field means more GCR [even in the Arctic] thus cooling.
“We conclude that local effects in variations of the cosmic ray flux, which may dominate over the globally averaged changes in some locations, should be taken into account in long-term studies of solar-terrestrial relations.”
All they are saying here is that locally you may find cases that are exceptions to the general rule [which still dominates]. Just as with temperature.
Dr. Svalgaard
Proceedings for Royal Society published in 2007 an article by Lockwood and Frohlich
http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
On page 9 Fig. 4c shows a graph for open solar flux (1900-2000), admittedly different from standard Lockwood graph, but in no way flat. Further more he states :”… the long-term decline in cosmic rays over much of the twentieth century (seen in figure 4d and caused by the rise in open solar flux seen in figure 4c)….”
What is your view of the this graph and the statement regarding solar flux .
Leif
october 2001…
I think you have this backwards
My idea (probably not a good one) was that if the magnetic field deflects GCR towards the polar regions then a weaker field will give less GCR there.
But even if this is not the case, more clouds in the arctic winter means warming 🙂 Are there GCR records from Alaska and Siberia somewhere?
vukcevic (13:29:28) :
On page 9 Fig. 4c shows a graph for open solar flux (1900-2000), admittedly different from standard Lockwood graph, but in no way flat.
Lockwood is getting closer. What the geomagnetic method measures is not the open flux, but the total magnetic field, B. The total field consists of three components, one of them, Br, along the radial to the the Sun. One measure of the ‘open flux’ is the area of a sphere surrounding the Sun times the size of this radial component, which is unknown and has to be derived somehow from the total field. On average Br = 0.5 B.
If you look at Figure 3 of http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf you can see that we basically agree on the B is [he still has some problems with the early data, but from 1910 on he is pretty close – the difference comes from we using data from more stations than Lockwood]. So, how to calculate Br?. The problem is that the Heliospheric field is highly variable in direction on short time scales. Such variability decreases the value of Br averaged over an hour or a day [he uses the latter interval]. To see how this is so important, remember that there is a ‘sector structure’ in the HMF: every 7-10 days [with lots of spread] the sign of Br changes, so if you average over a whole solar rotation you have as much negative Br as positive Br and |Br|~0, so the length of the averaging interval is crucial.
We discuss this in detail in section 2 of http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf . Based on our arguments [especially Figure 2] we find that “We therefore do not find any of the conclusions based of the calculation of |Br| by LRFS06 to be valid”. This includes the very low values of |Br|/B in the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore the open flux calculated by Lockwood is too low at that time. One could, of course, chose to ignore our analysis and press on regardless.
About the cosmic ray flux “over much of the twentieth century”, direct measurements since 1952 show no such decline, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
None of these issues are important for Lockwood and Froehlich’s main conclusion, namely that the solar variables since the 1980s do not follow the temperature variation. What happened before that time is not so relevant.
Often, a simpler approach is more compelling. A current overhead in the polar ionosphere creates a magnetic perturbation on the ground that is readily measured [since 1883!]. In http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Spring%202006%20SH51A-06.pdf we detail this phenomenon. It turns out that the current in the polar cap is given by the electric field in the solar wind mapped down to the ionosphere along magnetic field lines. A measure of this electric field is the product of the solar wind speed V and B; thus VB is proportional to the magnetic perturbation on the ground. For the solar minimum years 1902-03 and 1912-13 the VB measured in this way comes out to be 2000 km/s*nT. For the past two years 2007-2008, VB measured by spacecraft has been 1990. We must therefore conclude that conditions back then are very much as they are right now, and that includes Br and the open flux, unless everything was very different but just conspired to look the same. E.g. we can have a very low Br [and thus B], but then V would have to be higher back then than anything measured in modern times. This is not excluded, but I feel that it is very unlikely.
lgl (13:55:57) :
My idea (probably not a good one) was that if the magnetic field deflects GCR towards the polar regions then a weaker field will give less GCR there.
But even if this is not the case, more clouds in the arctic winter means warming 🙂 Are there GCR records from Alaska and Siberia somewhere?
Is the South Pole high enough latitude for you? 🙂
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, A12102, doi:10.1029/2006JA011894, 2007
Long-term decline of South Pole neutron rates
J. W. Bieber et al.
Abstract
The count rate recorded by a neutron monitor at South Pole, Antarctica, displays a long-term decline over the 32-year span from 1965 to 1997. The neutron rate follows an 11-year cycle with maxima at times of low solar activity, but the 1997 peak rate was approximately 8% lower than the 1965 peak rate based on 27-d averages. This change is much larger than that recorded by any other neutron monitor […].
At lower latitudes [and globally] there is no such decline:
http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRayFlux.png
Thank you Dr. Svalgaard.
I shall look through the material you quoted, I am sure there is a lot there I will find useful. Thanks again.
vukcevic (13:29:28) :
Dr. Svalgaard
Proceedings for Royal Society published in 2007 an article by Lockwood and Frohlich
http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
A couple of things stood out to me in the above paper.
Is Lockwood referencing out of date papers?
There is considerable evidence for century-scale drifts in various solar outputs, in addition to the solar cycle variations (Lean et al. 1995; Lockwood et al. 1999; Solanki et al. 2001, 2004;Lockwood 2004, 2006; Beer et al. 2006; Rouillard et al. 2007)
And using GISS records to show global temps makes his paper weak in my view. He is attempting to show the anti correlation between solar activity and global temps and uses the GISS records in a cherry picking manner that go to 2000. If he used satellite data to 2008 i think his case would look much weaker. Plus i dont think i saw anything on PDO or ENSO effects that might have some influence i would suspect.
lgl (13:55:57) :
My idea (probably not a good one) was that if the magnetic field deflects GCR towards the polar regions then a weaker field will give less GCR there.
It looks to me that by selecting different specific times and different specific locations almost any correlation can be supported because there are such a large variety of results. One can find correlations that support almost anything if you look hard enough. Proof or disproof by way of correlations using faulty data sets with ‘steps’ and calibration issues and picking only data and times where it works [or the opposite, if you want to prove the opposite] is just so questionable that it is hardly worth the effort. A standard way to check if correlations hold up with time is simply to wait and see. A correlation is a ‘prediction’ in the sense that if causal it should work in future as well.
nobwainer (16:41:19) :
Is Lockwood referencing out of date papers?
There is considerable evidence for century-scale drifts in various solar outputs, in addition to the solar cycle variations (Lean et al. 1995; Lockwood et al. 1999; Solanki et al. 2001, 2004;Lockwood 2004, 2006; Beer et al. 2006; Rouillard et al. 2007)
Evidently, especially the Lean 1995, and Lockwood 1999 papers.
Now Lockwood has a double goal: not only is it about climate, he is also fighting a ‘rearguard’ action to protect his own reputation [scientists are human too]
And using GISS records to show global temps makes his paper weak in my view.
If correlations [pro and con] depend so critically upon which data set is used they are typically spurious anyway. Forgetting the decimals it is clear that temps have gone up since 1980 and that solar activity has gone down. I think that Lockwood was mainly supporting the knee-jerk reaction of AGWers that any variation not ascribable to AGW is due solely to the Sun, which means that we just have to subtract the Sun and all the rest is AGW. Too many natural causes or factors is a potential danger because it becomes hard to disentangle them from AGW.
Leif (18:21:38) Quibbling a bit, but temperatures have peaked and are now trending down, consistent with the PDO flipped to its cooling phase.
Perhaps the sun-climate link through cosmic rays is not a simple function of the decrease in the earth’s magnetic field. If there is such a link, the temperature course of the last century would indicate that the link is not simple or direct.
===================================================
kim (18:55:38) :
Perhaps the sun-climate link through cosmic rays is not a simple function of the decrease in the earth’s magnetic field. If there is such a link, the temperature course of the last century would indicate that the link is not simple or direct.
This could very well be the case, but the problem I’m having is when people claim that there is ‘strong evidence’ for this or that.