I know. This sounds like a plot of a 1950’s scifi movie. But it is real. From my view, our localized corner of the solar system is now different than it used to be and changes in the magnetic interactions are evident everywhere. First we have the interplanetary magnetic field that took an abrupt dive in October 2005 and has not recovered since and remains at very low level:
click for a larger image
Then we have the recent discovery that the ionosphere has dropped in altitude to unexpected and unexplained low levels.
We have a solar cycle 24 (driven by the solar magnetic dynamo) which can’t seem to get out of the starting gate, being a year late with forecasts for activity from it being revised again and again.
And finally we have this, this discovery that Earth’s magnetic field can be ripped open and our atmosphere laid bare to the solar wind, much like Mars.
Magnetism is underrated in the grand scheme of things, in my opinion. We’d do well to pay more attention to magnetic trends in our corner of the universe and what effects it has on Earthly climate. – Anthony
From NASA News (h/t to Geoff Sharp)
Dec. 16, 2008: NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to “load up” the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.
“At first I didn’t believe it,” says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.”
The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind. Exploring the bubble is a key goal of the THEMIS mission, launched in February 2007. The big discovery came on June 3, 2007, when the five probes serendipitously flew through the breach just as it was opening. Onboard sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, signaling an event of unexpected size and importance.
Right: One of the THEMIS probes exploring the space around Earth, an artist’s concept. [more]
“The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself,” says Wenhui Li, a space physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has been analyzing the data. Li’s colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says “1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that’s a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.”
The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
Above: A computer model of solar wind flowing around Earth’s magnetic field on June 3, 2007. Background colors represent solar wind density; red is high density, blue is low. Solid black lines trace the outer boundaries of Earth’s magnetic field. Note the layer of relatively dense material beneath the tips of the white arrows; that is solar wind entering Earth’s magnetic field through the breach. Credit: Jimmy Raeder/UNH. [larger image]
The size of the breach took researchers by surprise. “We’ve seen things like this before,” says Raeder, “but never on such a large scale. The entire day-side of the magnetosphere was open to the solar wind.”
The circumstances were even more surprising. Space physicists have long believed that holes in Earth’s magnetosphere open only in response to solar magnetic fields that point south. The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to a solar magnetic field that pointed north.
“To the lay person, this may sound like a quibble, but to a space physicist, it is almost seismic,” says Sibeck. “When I tell my colleagues, most react with skepticism, as if I’m trying to convince them that the sun rises in the west.”
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Here is why they can’t believe their ears: The solar wind presses against Earth’s magnetosphere almost directly above the equator where our planet’s magnetic field points north. Suppose a bundle of solar magnetism comes along, and it points north, too. The two fields should reinforce one another, strengthening Earth’s magnetic defenses and slamming the door shut on the solar wind. In the language of space physics, a north-pointing solar magnetic field is called a “northern IMF” and it is synonymous with shields up!
“So, you can imagine our surprise when a northern IMF came along and shields went down instead,” says Sibeck. “This completely overturns our understanding of things.”
Northern IMF events don’t actually trigger geomagnetic storms, notes Raeder, but they do set the stage for storms by loading the magnetosphere with plasma. A loaded magnetosphere is primed for auroras, power outages, and other disturbances that can result when, say, a CME (coronal mass ejection) hits.
The years ahead could be especially lively. Raeder explains: “We’re entering Solar Cycle 24. For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It’s the perfect sequence for a really big event.”
Sibeck agrees. “This could result in stronger geomagnetic storms than we have seen in many years.”
For more information about the THEMIS mission, visit http://nasa.gov/themis
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DR quotes some stuff:
However, we are told that the science is settled and the sun does not affect the climate!
When the Pioneer and Vogager Spacecraft went out and sent back images and new data indicating the Solar System was actually far different than we had imagined, scientists quickly set about devising new models of what they observed.
Why is this Earth/Sun Climate science so much more difficult?
There is no agreement to be found anywhere.
The Chaos Theory on steroids.
Chris Schoneveld (23:35:57) :
And if that is so what caused the Little Ice Age?
You display a lack of imagination. Here is some speculation that may be a contender:
New World Post-Pandemic Reforestation Helped Start Little Ice Age, December 18th, 2008 in Space & Earth science / Earth Sciences
The power of viruses is well documented in human history. Swarms of little viral Davids have repeatedly laid low the great Goliaths of human civilization, most famously in the devastating pandemics that swept the New World during European conquest and settlement.
In recent years, there has been growing evidence for the hypothesis that the effect of the pandemics in the Americas wasn’t confined to killing indigenous peoples. Global climate appears to have been altered as well.
Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands-abandoned as the population collapsed-pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.
“We estimate that the amount of carbon sequestered in the growing forests was about 10 to 50 percent of the total carbon that would have needed to come out of the atmosphere and oceans at that time to account for the observed changes in carbon dioxide concentrations,” said Richard Nevle, visiting scholar in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford. Nevle and Dennis Bird, professor in geological and environmental sciences, presented their study at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 17, 2008.
Nevle and Bird synthesized published data from charcoal records from 15 sediment cores extracted from lakes, soil samples from 17 population centers and 18 sites from the surrounding areas in Central and South America. They examined samples dating back 5,000 years.
What they found was a record of slowly increasing charcoal deposits, indicating increasing burning of forestland to convert it to cropland, as agricultural practices spread among the human population-until around 500 years ago: At that point, there was a precipitous drop in the amount of charcoal in the samples, coinciding with the precipitous drop in the human population in the Americas.
To verify their results, they checked their fire histories based on the charcoal data against records of carbon dioxide concentrations and carbon isotope ratios that were available.
“We looked at ice cores and tropical sponge records, which give us reliable proxies for the carbon isotope composition of atmospheric carbon dioxide. And it jumped out at us right away,” Nevle said. “We saw a conspicuous increase in the isotope ratio of heavy carbon to light carbon. That gave us a sense that maybe we were looking at the right thing, because that is exactly what you would expect from reforestation.”
During photosynthesis, plants prefer carbon dioxide containing the lighter isotope of carbon. Thus a massive reforestation event would not only decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but would also leave carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that was enriched in the heavy carbon isotope.
Other theories have been proposed to account for the cooling at the time of the Little Ice Age, as well as the anomalies in the concentration and carbon isotope ratios of atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with that period.
Variations in the amount of sunlight striking the Earth, caused by a drop in sunspot activity, could also be a factor in cooling down the globe, as could a flurry of volcanic activity in the late 16th century.
But the timing of these events doesn’t fit with the observed onset of the carbon dioxide drop. These events don’t begin until at least a century after carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to decline and the ratio of heavy to light carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide begins to increase.
Nevle and Bird don’t attribute all of the cooling during the Little Ice Age to reforestation in the Americas.
“There are other causes at play,” Nevle said. “But reforestation is certainly a first-order contributor.”
kim (14:42:46) :
Tea is better than coffee, and chocolate best of all. Theobromine, the food of the Gods.
Reply: Kim enjoy your chocolate for now because its the next thing on global warming’s list.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.400-chocolate-in-peril.html?page=1
Richard Sharpe (21:06:41) :
DR quotes some stuff:
According to a study in Geographical Research published by Wiley-Blackwell, the droughts in eastern Australia are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.
However, we are told that the science is settled and the sun does not affect the climate!
You can find review at:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1217/1
Blame the Sun for a Cloudy Day? By Phil Berardelli. ScienceNOW Daily News,17 December 2008
It quotes:
So what’s behind the connection? Baker thinks it has to do with the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation hitting Earth. When the reversing of polarity approaches, he explains, the sun’s magnetic field weakens, allowing more UV energy to reach our planet. More UV radiation kills off some of the oceans’ plankton…..
Compare above with:
Increased solar activity results in an increase of harmful radiation, reducing bio-mass of
oceans’ surface plankton through process of sterilisation by irradiation. Result of this is reduced
uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and rising in the ‘green-house’ effect, finally increasing the
global temperature. Reverse process takes place during reductions in the solar activity.
Published in 2004
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/26/83/91/PDF/solar_synchronisation.pdf
Nevertheless, the fly in the soup is at the final paragraph of the article:
“On the other hand, Lockwood says, the paper contains no statistical tests, and connections such as the one it suggests “can arise readily by chance, even for extended intervals.”
What could we expect from a predisposed magazine that refuses to publish articles deflating AGW?
I hope your kidding Leif because reforestation come on. What was the population then? It was the climate change that triggered the population decline and not the opposite. Along with the plague. While that is a possibility so is a meteor strike. I’m on the side of “what cause it” I don’t think I have ever said one way or the other what caused it. Maybe it was a meteor strike. Maybe 400 years of continuous volcanism.
Also Reforestation is a positive albedo effect. Dark trees cause more warming. It also could be a super nova event and the CRF went way up.
Dear Jim Arndt… Agree. Many trees and herbs counts on a primitive thermoregulation capability based on chaperon proteins and volatile substances which act similarly to antifreezes. Those plants absorb more heat than plants which depend more on their thermal capability of absorbing heat from the environment. Spearmint, for example, has always a higher body temperature than dayflowers and melons. I think, and it is my speculation only, that pines are more efficient on capturing the infrared radiation incoming from the Sun than other tropical plants.
Leif Svalgaard (22:25:47) :
Chris Schoneveld (23:35:57) :
And if that is so what caused the Little Ice Age?
You display a lack of imagination. Here is some speculation that may be a contender:
Imaginative, but not in contention.
If the relatively minor changes in co2 concentration Prior to 1850, carbon dioxide concentration is in the range typical of a warm, interglacial period. Carbon dioxide concentration is perhaps a little higher during the MWP and a little lower during the LIA. produced by a latin American population in 1750 of 2 million (Wikipedia) pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling then the amount of forest being destroyed yearly in the Amazon basin by modern methods (mechanized slash and burn) would correspond to an increase of 10 -15 degrees F globally. This feedback is hogwash.
Incidently Leif, thanks for the tips on the italic and bold, I’ll continue to overuse it for a while.
Tim Clark… “Watt” tips? on italic and bold? 😐
Folks, the ball is rolling in a direction that cannot be stopped. Lets have fun, live in the moment, and stop the stupidity. Every so often, a event hits this earth that seems to totaly knock us on our ass ( if there will be a ass left to knock). So what are we to do? NOTHING-there is never anything to fear. Follow your heart and be who you choose to be.
Jim Arndt (08:10:38) :
I hope your kidding Leif because reforestation come on.
No, this is an actual study [peer-reviewed and all]. I cited it just to show that there are people with more imagination [wrong or right not important] than the crowd that can only see ‘solar’ [before 1980] or AGW [after 1980]. My post was a comment on the invalid ‘what else?’ argument.
INCREDIBLE!!
Are there any online accessible records of the magnometer/electron flux graphs (in visual form)? http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/Electron.gif
You can listen and even watch the weirdness on real time radio stations of the ionosphere/magnetosphere here:
(I recommend this one: http://67.207.143.181/vlf3.m3u )
There are more stations here:
http://abelian.org/vlf/
I record (using streamripper + winamp) the station and then watch the radio wave form as a voice print spectrograph in adobe audition… for great detail I recommend using adobe audition, and using voice print as your viewing method) It is a spectacular visual dance of the ionosphere!
Voice⋅print
–noun
a graphic representation of a person’s voice (or any sound for that matter), showing the component frequencies as analyzed by a sound spectrograph.”
There is a weak voice print visualization that comes with winamp, under plugins/nullsoft tiny fullscreen) that could get the layman started.
In some stations you will see (and hear repetitious alien like sounds) Those sounds are numbers that you can actually see as a voice print. The numbers probably correspond to the date and time of the recording.
If we could go through records of these, we could see if any such occurrence has happened our species very first recordings of the ionosphere.
Just a funny thought… what are the chances our calendar, in relation to the Mayan calendar may be 3 years off.
This 2012 theory also lines up well with Terence Mckennas “Time Wave Zero” theory… absolutely fascinating… watch a video about it here:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8701042459684666916&ei=XUBMSbWWCaS2qAO7uYScCw&q=timewave+zero
Leif,
Point well taken now that I see what you meant. Your not one for hair brained ideas. I was thinking that it might be part of some oscillation left over from the ice age. There is a cyclical nature to climate and after the ice age there was the holocene then the Roman period and then the medevil and the climate slows until we go back into the ice age.
I would think that reforestation occured in S. America the same way it did in Europe: There wasn’t too many people around to burn the woods, on account that their crops failed.
Yeah, ok, eat drink & be merry for tomorrow the plague & the famine hits.
Dear Robert Bateman and All… I would add that there is not archaeological registers of those “massive” burnings which could cause an ice age. What Leif Svalgaard says is correct, they have a very large imagination.
Adolfo Giurfa (12:17:14) :
After or before earthquakes “lights” are seen in the sky. I saw two of these after the August 15 2007 7,9 Richter earthquake in Pisco, Peru; though I was in Lima, some 200 km. north.
Along those lines:
http://www.jupitersdance.com/index.html
Nasif Nahle (13:13:17) :
Tim Clark… “Watt” tips? on italic and bold? 😐
I can explain. See the “You can use these tags” line in the “Leave a comment” area?
<i>The i tag italicizes text</i>
<b>The b tag bolds text</b>
<em>This is what em does.</em>
<strike>
This is what strike does.</strike>I’m not certain about the last two, so I used them.
If you want to use a “less than sign”, use “<”.
If you want to use an ampersand, use “&”.
Oops,
If you want to use an ampersand, use “&”.
<code> is a marginally broken thing that lets you use
a monspace font so things line up. Unfortunately, it stills
collapses multiple spaces into one, so you should replace at
least every other space with
I don’t know what%lt;del datetime=”2008-12-31 23:59:59″> does.
Hmm, getting sloppy.
I don’t know what%lt;del datetime=”2008-12-31 23:59:59″> does.
I forgot the </del> before.
I’ve never used <cite>, it might be nothing more than italics.
The “q”
might stand for quote, it seems to put stuff in quotes.
I wonder what <abbr title=”foo”> does.
WordPress’s formatting options need some attention….
Thanks a lot, Ric I’ve copied it to have a reference at hand.
Does the “hole” signal a significant shift in core/mantle dynamics? Predictor of global epidemic of earthquakes?
This might be of interest:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1217/1?etoc
“In this month’s issue of Geographical Research, Baker reports that the amount of rainfall in most regions of the country tracked the 22-year magnetic cycle almost exactly”