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
George E. Smith (09:57:52) :
It is true that when the bury carbon dioxide that also bury the oxygen atoms that were used during the combustion process (i.e. combustion is generally defined as the reaction of organic material with oxygen to give carbon dioxide). Some time ago I did a quick calculation of how much oxygen and how long it would take to deplete the oxygen content from our atmosphere… the number of years it would take was very, very big… like 100s of millions of years.
Well maybe all the CO2 we’re unlocking by using fossil fuels will help replenish the atmosphere? Maybe we are saving the earth by burning coal and oil?
Well, well, well. Who’d a thunk it. What are the chances of discovering something we didn’t know in science, next to impossible I should a thunk!
Was it not Lord Kelvin who at the end on the 19th C said something about there being nothing new to discover in science now but only more & more refined measurement?????? We live & learn:-)
WAGTD! Hollywood beckons for a new film for 2010 summer blockbuster. We’ve had The Day After Tomorrow’ new ice-age, comets & asteroids, the Earths core slowing down, now we’ve got “Atmosphere Armaggedon” coming soon to a movie theater near you! I can’t resist it, could it be a case of armageddon out of here!
We, humans, the greatest contaminators, with the help of our cattle, sheep and pets, SUVs, our exhaling, beers and sodas, (not forgetting fermentation of our daily bread with baking soda) can fix the problem!
we need to encourage the keeping of huge new flocks of methane producing sheep and cows in order to keep the atmospheric pressure up.
It just goes to show that assumed knowledge is just that, assumed. Consensus is what you have when you stop looking at an issue because you are called an idiot when you do. So tell me how any of the scientists before that said that the Magnetic shield was keeping us from loosing atmosphere are any different then people who said the earth was flat? They allowed prejudice and their own knowledge to override scientific experimentation. I can prove over and over again that the earth is not flat. People cannot, no matter how hard they try, prove that it is flat. I hate Al Gore for making a comparison that is so ad hominum and straw man and to have had the press eat it up.
People can only SUGGEST that CO2 is the cause for global warming. It is a popular theory, the science is not settled and those who question are not Flat Earthers. Most do not even deny that CO2 can provide an increase in atmospheric warming.
Sorry I am just so tired of consensus without any real demonstrable science. It cannot be proven, it can be linked by circumstance, but when is that anything other then that circumstance. Technically by the same token I can link increase CO2 in our atmosphere to a greater longevity. I am sure I could even find some obscure physiological response to show my idea has merit. But it is bad science.
Sorry for the Rant, love the site.
It must be quite a travel budget to get people together who work on Earth, Venus and Mars.
So we’ve been losing an average 83 mol / sec for what some billion years? I’m too lazy to figure what the volume of 1 mol is a sea level but the number of them in the atmosphere must be huge!
Still we need an Emergency Mandate to start generating replacement gasses IMMEDIATELY. It’s for the children and the continuity of our way of life. Anyone sequestering gasses is contibuting to the Loss Of Our Atmosphere. Some people are so greedy and selfish.
I think there is something to apocalyptic religious prophecy. Maybe the time frames are not 100% accurate, but the big picture may be. Many assume Earth will remain livable for millions of years into the future. How do we really know that? We don’t.
So, here we sit, stuck in low Earth orbit, with only a few brief visits to the Moon 35 – 40 years ago. What is wrong with this picture?
The fact that we have atmosphere after 3 billion years implies that something is replenishing it. Or the rate of loss is miniscule. Or we’re awfully unlucky to be living when we run out of it.
There was a lot of volatiles in the rocks which created Earth, and there still is. The behavior of rocks in the mantle requires water, so there must be a lot of water still within the molten rock. Planetary quantities, not mere oceanic quantities. Others have done the math of the amount of volatiles which are in the ongoing meteorite contribution.
Quick tell the politicians we need more hot air!
RACookPE1978 (09:42:27) :
“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 …..”
Fear not! According to the Waxman Theory issued in April, Global Warming will “evaporate” the icecaps, thereby releasing the tundra underneath them. It will be free to rise up and replace all this lost atmosphere!!
Well that brings to mind a number of questions I’ve had for some time and for which I have not been able to find the answer. The CO2 component of the atmosphere is measured and reported in PPM that is the same as saying what % of a well-mixed, dry atmosphere is CO2. So my simple mind asked, well that’s all well and good AND needed for many areas of endeavor, but for CO2 to BE the culprit it’s made out to be in causing GW, it’s molecular volume has to increase…. Question 1 – But is it?
There is only one way to know – measure the atmosphere construct globally at all altitudes by volume of molecules/moles. How many moles of nitrogen, how moles of oxygen, how moles of carbon dioxide, etc. Questions 2A & B – Are we/where are we doing that? Can we do that?
Due to it being (by molecular weight) a heavier gas and contrary to the “well mixed” assumption required of the current global weather models, CO2 %/PPM, while probably somewhat similarly mixed at any given altitude, must vary significantly (decreasing by altitude) from the surface to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Ask any hiker about sitting down to rest on a calm wind day in a concave bowl of land…. If they’re still around.
And a PPM/% figure itself tells us nothing, except some other atmospheric gas(es) in sum, must be decreasing proportionally. If other gases are decreasing by say, being carried away by the solar wind at the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where there is little if any CO2, or more likely consumed/sequestered by some other process at lower levels, mathematically that could account for 100% of PPM/% increase of CO2. Question 3 – Is that the case?
BTW, that would seem to me to be a far more plausable answer to the very smooth (year to year) increase in the PPM/% of CO2, i.e., the smooth sequestering of OTHER atmospheric gases.
So question 4 is – What is decreasing? I’ve read that it is (mostly) the oxygen component that is decreasing but cannot find and therefore cannot point to any study (per-reviewed, of course ☺) that so states. Only a lose connection via massive human conversion of O2 to CO2 by burning – – yada, yada, yada. Question 4A – Is CO2 PPM increasing at the expense of O2? Question 5 – Where are the studies that clearly quantify the decreasing and increasing volumes of each and delineate the processes by which that is occurring?
IMHO the answer to the above questions (and I fully realize that some may have answers I have not been able to find) are far more important than trying to nail down the perfect average global surface air temperature and whether the current temp (if we can ever figure that out) is over or under and by how much and is it trending and why and what will that do and …..
Looking at Mars it is kind of obvious that the chief culprits for loss of atmosphere were the Argyre and Hellas impacts, as well as thousands of other impactors large enough to produce atmospheric loss. The current C02 atmosphere may be mostly a secondary atmosphere produced by vulcanism.
Really?!
The sun has a potential giant effect on our atmosphere?
Bu . .bu.bu…bu . . but – wait a minute . . .
I thou . . . I thou . . I thought – it – was a minor player . .
I mean . . it’s – us – isn’t it?
We’re bad, aren’t we?
Our carbon foot prints – right?
The sun?
Nooooooooooooo . . !
(Sarcasm off)
But seriously 😉
Is there time to get these tomatoes in the ground before the CO2 is gone?
DAV (10:41:04) :
1 mol at STP is 22.4 Litre.
John Galt (09:09:30) :
And why do you use the term ‘consensus’? That’s never an appropriate term for a science discussion.
Because irony is much more delicious when not explicitly stated.
Mark
Stop worrying, we’re gonna collide with Mars, or maybe Venus. The brilliant Prof who has figured this out, hedges his bets, or maybe Mercury is going to collide with Venus.
Todays nutty story from Auntie Beeb. I kid you not. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8093005.stm
It’s full of ‘coulds’ ‘mights’ ‘tinys’, and to finish, he stuns us with his amazing grasp of Mathematics. Did you realize that Mars was bigger than a bullet, or when Mercury and Venus combine together, they will form a bigger planet than before.
It shows that there are still people out there with too much time on their hands.
Will somebody out there please put the BBC out of its misery.
For purposes of climate study, the point isn’t that the Earth is losing its atmosphere, that apparently has been happening all along and we are still here.
The point is that irradiance, watt per square metre, isn’t the only energy that the Earth’s atmosphere receives from the Sun. The Earth receives electromagnetic energy from the Sun in different form.
And why is this important?
Because present climate models don’t take this additional electromagnetic energy into account.
The Earth’s atmosphere is effected by ALL electromagnetic energy received from the Sun. Supposedly, the Earth’s irradiance only varies .01% between solar maximum and solar minimum. Perhaps so.
But taking into account all forms of electromagnetic energy the Earth receives from the Sun likely kicks up that percentage variance well above .01%.
It would seem a fruitful scientific endeavor to observe & measure the variance in ALL electromagnetic energy received from the Sun that reaches the Earth’s atmosphere. And this report suggests if the solar wind (and Birkeland currents) knock off some of Earth’s atmosphere into space, then at least a portion of that energy (if not all of it) is also adding to the remaining atmosphere’s energy budget.
Commen sense: View the Sun at solar maximum, it’s an angry beast, it even swells in size (diameter); view the Sun at solar minimum, it’s somnolent, smooth, and emits less energy.
In essence, that is the dominant argument of this website.
And, it’s common sense.
Now, it seems that science, in this particular instance, is catching up.
Yes, sometimes “common sense” has something going for it!
Could solar wind stripping thermal mass from the atmosphere be considered to be a form of “evaporation”? i.e. would changes in the strength of the solar wind have the effect of heating or cooling the atmosphere? Think of comets and the way solar heating creates the atmosphere on larger chunks of comet. These heated particles that comprise the comet’s atmosphere contain thermal mass that gets stripped away to create the tail of the comet. Does this have the effect of cooling the system as a whole? How big of an effect would that be?
Milwaukee Bob: I think I’ve seen a few papers of atmospheric composition at several altitudes, so there is some info available. It also has been thought that hydrogen was probably being lost off the top of the atmosphere, but this newly discovered action suggests that other alterations of composition may be taking place. As long as the rate of alteration is only measurable in terms of millions of years, it should be more relevant to paleoclimate than climate. But is enough known?
there have been about 400 magnetic reversals in the earth’s history, some while humans have been trotting around the planet. the discovery of this reversal record in oceanic basalt was one of the first clues that continental drift was real. anyone who has taken geology 101 should know this.
not sure why the magnetic field would be assumed to be “normal” during these periods. it’s postulated that during these times, the effects of the solar wind on the atmosphere is similar to that of venus and mars.
what is the big new revelation?
all planets lose gas as Tom_R alluded to, when the molecule can reach escape velocity. i remember calculating this for molecules in the martian atmosphere (in astronomy 101)
@tarpon this link says that at the current rate, the magnetic field should be zero in 1,500 years. sorry to those that were hoping for it in 2012…
http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/reversals_e.php
also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
Another scientific consensus bites the dust? What consensus would that be? Certainly not that the solar winds very slowly strip away Earth’s atmosphere. A quick Google search shows that that has been known for years. The consensus that bites the dust (assuming that the new research is correct) is the RATE of atmospheric loss due to solar winds. Previously, it was thought that “it would take five times the total lifetime of the sun to deplete the Earth’s atmosphere” (Lundin, 2001 at http://www.irf.se/press/press_010309eng.html.) The new, “startling” research featured above concludes that it will actually take a mere… “several more billion years.” That’s the story here. Interesting, but hardly worthy of the headline it was accorded.
rbateman (09:37:17) :
Just don’t lose the Moon
the moon is moving away from the earth around 38 mm per annum, so we are losing the moon – scary huh!
I am curious, what about those tiny water comets earth is supposed to be bombarded with? Don’t they add mass in the billion years?
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/