It has been said that “the science is settled” regarding what we know about Earth’s atmosphere and climate. But recently scientists discovered that something we had accepted as a basic truth for a very long time is not true at all. One of the “basic truths” we all learned is that Earth’s atmosphere is “protected” from the solar wind by its magnetic field, unlike Mars which has lost most of its atmosphere due to the solar wind.
But when some space scientists compared notes recently, they discovered something startling:
“We said, ‘Oh my goodness — what we’ve been telling people about the magnetic shield is not correct.'”
And so what we thought to be true about our atmosphere, isn’t.
Earth Losing Atmosphere Faster than Venus, Mars
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
June 2, 2009 — Researchers were stunned to discover recently that Earth is losing more of its atmosphere than Venus and Mars, which have negligible magnetic fields.
This may mean our planet’s magnetic shield may not be as solid a protective screen as once believed when it comes to guarding the atmosphere from an assault from the sun.
“We often tell ourselves that we are very fortunate living on this planet because we have this strong magnetic shield that protects us from all sorts of things that the cosmos throws at us — cosmic rays, solar flares and the pesky solar wind,” said Christopher Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It certainly does help in some of those areas but … in the case of the atmosphere, this may not be true,” he said.
Russel and others came to this realization while meeting at a comparative planetology conference last month.
“Three of us who work on Earth, Venus and Mars got together and compared notes,” Russell told Discovery News. “We said, ‘Oh my goodness — what we’ve been telling people about the magnetic shield is not correct.'”
The perpetrators are streams of charged particles blasting off the sun in what is known as the solar wind.
“The interaction of solar wind with Venus and Mars is pretty simple,” Russell said. “The wind comes in, carries a magnetic field, which wraps around the ionosphere of the planet. The ionosphere is basically dragged away.”
Complete article here at Discovery News
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Am I too late to sign up for oil money ?
Interesting. If earth’s atmosphere is diminishing, one wonders how long is has been doing so. And when there was last a net gain in atmosphere.
Yup. Earth is constantly losing atmosphere. It is volcanism that replaces it. If you slow volcanism, you thin the atmosphere over time. When the time comes where Earth has cooled enough to where volcanism slows enough that gasses released from volcanism are less than the gasses lost to space, the Earth is doomed. We will then begin to lose the oceans to space, too.
Now hold on there, pardner! One study or one new observation does not overturn a ‘consensus’. This has to be verified by independent scientists. So maybe this does make us rewrite the text books an’ maybe it don’t.
And why do you use the term ‘consensus’? That’s never an appropriate term for a science discussion.
Woh.
Good thing there does not threaten Algore’s money, or the scientists working on it would be in big trouble.
This raises whole volumes of questions.
And who was that spinner at RC asserting that getting global temps was ‘easy’?
Maybe this will be the basis of the new apocalypse theory du jour in a couple of years time.
You know that you are helping to inform the alarmists of their next Anthropogenic Global Alarm.
Human activity is denuding the earth of atmosphere faster than normal, so we have to tax you all to ensure our children’s children’s children actually have an atmosphere to breath!
“Maybe this will be the basis of the new apocalypse theory du jour in a couple of years time.”
My fear exactly, Phil.
Did anyone notice the complete absence of the once mandatory sop to AGW? “Despite the rather mind-boggling rate at which Earth is losing atmosphere — 5×1025 molecules per second — scientists say there is no cause for alarm. If the loss rate stays the same, the planet’s atmosphere will last for several more billion years.”
Several more billion? with no mention that we will all be long gone from catastrophic global warming? Was this just an oversight, or are a few jumping off the bandwagon?
whee! Henny Penny was right. The sky is falling, but not downwards as she thought.
I knew it. Ever since Edison started fooling around with nature. I think it all has to do with electric power grids, cell phones and wireless communications polluting the earth’s natural magnetic field. This new finding suspiciously coincides with the large increase in the use of electricity, tvs, radios, cell phones and WiFi. We should institute an IPMC and get to the bottom of it. In the mean time, with an abundance of caution, we should stop building all electrical plants (coal and nuclear) and anything that involves magnets or the propagation of electromagnetic waves. We should also instute EMF Day where everybody would give up using all electronic and electric powered devices for a day to show how commitment to preserving spaceship earth. NASA and NOAA should receive whatever funds they need to solve this problem before it is too late.
I was reading of the rim of fire. The pacific has movement under it and is rimmed with volcanoes. To what extent can currents move heat up north to the Artic sea?
How do we eliminate geothermal energy as a source of heat in artic water?
I found myself wondering if there is a relationship here to fluctuations in the size of the Ozone hole with solar activity.
We need to quickly hire an atmosphere czar and implement an ionosphere tax, its the only way to deal with this grave threat to humanity.
It’s the tidal interactions with Moon & Sun which keeps volcanism going on Earth (internal heating, flexing) that keeps the re-supply going to the atmosphere.
Just don’t lose the Moon.
Too late. The cutoff point for new knowledge has already passed. We can’t keep revising texts and journals forever. Just pick a hypothesis and go with it.
Sheesh!!
Hasn’t the earth’s magnetic field been dropping for like the last 30 years or so — And isn’t it now down and dropping. The talk is about a pole flip coming.
The issue has always been around what happens when the pole flips, does it go through zero, linger at zero and how long is the period.
If it goes through zero and remains for any period of time, that could be bad for the earth and it’s atmosphere. Maybe Al Gore can figure out what to do.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I got it.
See, the earth is losing its atmosphere, but plate tectonic activity has been (relatively) quiet lately. So, reduced amounts of atmosphere
= reduces numbers of atmospheric molecules
= more room between molecules
= fewer collisions between atmospheric molecules
= greater speed of each “average” atmospheric molecule
= higher kinetic energy of the average molecule
= higher temperature of each average molecule
= greater measured temperature of the atmosphere.
Global warming explained! 8<)
Now, if we could only figure out some way to – maybe – dig up some "new atmosphere" molecules or "replacement" atmospheric molecules FROM the ground and release them so they would go up into the air and replace all the atmospheric molecules being dragged away by the solar wind …..
Oh no — we’re all gonna die — in several billion years … wake me when it happens. Darn that reality – it keeps on acting up and defying our cherished belief systems.
That’s old news… take a look at this interview that was done on September 10, 2008 ( http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/earth-atmosphere-hans-nilsson-02.html ). The guy even gives some figures but there is a big margin of uncertainty.
I still think this is a theory that needs more data in order to quantify the timing of these ablation episodes. As I mentioned in prior comments, I think it could be the change in the solar wind, as opposed to the total pressure. So, an ablation moment could occur when the momentary solar wind changes, thus altering the local magnetic field high above the earth. A small change in the solar uh, flux (a flux of flux? Sorry.) when the sun is not active might have as much or more of an ability to ablate the atmosphere as a change when the solar activity is strong. When the solar activity is strong, the interaction with the earth’s magnetic field has to compress things, so any eddy generated would be accordingly smaller in size. It’s when the solar activity is light, like now… that’s when the earth’s magnetic field can expand, and any eddy blown off by a quick solar wind “wave” (from a solar wind stream generated by a coronal hole, say) could be significantly large.
The Earth’s atmosphere differentiates by atomic/molecular weight at high altitudes, so most of the loss is from lighter elements and molecules.
This explains where all of the helium went. There must have been a lot more helium entering in the Earth’s atmosphere from radioactive alpha decay compared to argon from potassium 40 decay. The question was why the helium was lost when the temperature-gravity equation predicted much slower loss.
W’all whadya know ! We finally have a good reason to stop this carbon sequestration BS once and for all.
Don’t these atmo-terrorist realize that they are encapsulating perfectly good oxygen atmosphere along with their carbon fetish.
We should have the Supreme Court; that ultimate arbiter of good science, declare oxygen to be an endangered species; adn direct the EPA to ban the sequestration of atmospheric Oxygen.
The next thing they need to ban is the fixation of Nitrogen; which destroys even more atmosphere.
Yes I think I have discovered what research I should undertake when I retire; and do it all on Government (taxpayer) research dollars from NOAA or EPA.
Ban atmospheric sequestration Now; we’re all gonna die.
George
[snip]