This gives a whole new meaning to “Total Solar Irradiance”. Instead of TSI, perhaps we should call the energy transfer that comes from the sun to the earth TSE for “Total Solar Energy” so that it includes the solar wind, the geomagnetics, and other yet undiscovered linkages. Jack Eddy is smiling and holding up the patch cord he’s been given at last, wondering how long it will be before we find all the connectors.
Scientists discover surprise in Earth’s upper atmosphere
From the UCLA Newsroom: By Stuart Wolpert
UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth’s magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.
“It’s like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down,” said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a co-author of the research, which is in press in two companion papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The sun, in addition to emitting radiation, emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects the Earth and other planets in the solar system. The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun’s magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth.
Charged particles carry currents, which cause significant modifications in the Earth’s magnetosphere. This region is where communications spacecraft operate and where the energy releases in space known as substorms wreak havoc on satellites, power grids and communications systems.
The rate at which the solar wind transfers energy to the magnetosphere can vary widely, but what determines the rate of energy transfer is unclear.
“We thought it was known, but we came up with a major surprise,” said Lyons, who conducted the research with Heejeong Kim, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and other colleagues.
“This is where everything gets started,” Lyons said. “Any important variations in the magnetosphere occur because there is a transfer of energy from the solar wind to the particles in the magnetosphere. The first critical step is to understand how the energy gets transferred from the solar wind to the magnetosphere.”
The interplanetary magnetic field fluctuates greatly in magnitude and direction.
“We all have thought for our entire careers — I learned it as a graduate student — that this energy transfer rate is primarily controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field,” Lyons said. “The closer to southward-pointing the magnetic field is, the stronger the energy transfer rate is, and the stronger the magnetic field is in that direction. If it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger.”
However, Lyons, Kim and their colleagues analyzed radar data that measure the strength of the interaction by measuring flows in the ionosphere, the part of Earth’s upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation. The results surprised them.
“Any space physicist, including me, would have said a year ago there could not be substorms when the interplanetary magnetic field was staying northward, but that’s wrong,” Lyons said. “Generally, it’s correct, but when you have a fluctuating interplanetary magnetic field, you can have substorms going off once per hour.
“Heejeong used detailed statistical analysis to prove this phenomenon is real. Convection in the magnetosphere and ionosphere can be strongly driven by these fluctuations, independent of the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field.”
Convection describes the transfer of heat, or thermal energy, from one location to another through the movement of fluids such as liquids, gases or slow-flowing solids.
“The energy of the particles and the fields in the magnetosphere can vary by large amounts. It can be 10 times higher or 10 times lower from day to day, even from half-hour to half-hour. These are huge variations in particle intensities, magnetic field strength and electric field strength,” Lyons said.
The magnetosphere was discovered in 1957. By the late 1960s, it had become accepted among scientists that the energy transfer rate was controlled predominantly by the interplanetary magnetic field.
Lyons and Kim were planning to study something unrelated when they made the discovery.
“We were looking to do something else, when we saw life is not the way we expected it to be,” Lyons said. “The most exciting discoveries in science sometimes just drop in your lap. In our field, this finding is pretty earth-shaking. It’s an entire new mode of energy transfer, which is step one. The next step is to understand how it works. It must be a completely different process.”
The National Science Foundation has funded ground-based radars which send off radio waves that reflect off the ionosphere, allowing scientists to measure the speed at which the ions in the ionosphere are moving.
The radar stations are based in Greenland and Alaska. The NSF recently built the Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks.
“The National Science Foundation’s radars have enabled us to make this discovery,” Lyons said. “We could not have done this without them.”
The direction of the interplanetary magnetic field is important, Lyons said. Is it going in the same direction as the magnetic field going through the Earth? Does the interplanetary magnetic field connect with the Earth’s magnetic field?
“We thought there could not be strong convection and that the energy necessary for a substorm could not develop unless the interplanetary magnetic field is southward,” Lyons said. “I’ve said it and taught it. Now I have to say, ‘But when you have these fluctuations, which is not a rare occurrence, you can have substorms going off once an hour.'”
Lyons and Kim used the radar measurements to study the strength of the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.
One of their papers addresses convection and its affect on substorms to show it is a global phenomenon.
“When the interplanetary magnetic field is pointing northward, there is not much happening, but when the interplanetary magnetic field is southward, the flow speeds in the polar regions of the ionosphere are strong. You see much stronger convection. That is what we expect,” Lyons said. “We looked carefully at the data, and said, ‘Wait a minute! There are times when the field is northward and there are strong flows in the dayside polar ionosphere.'”
The dayside has the most direct contact with the solar wind.
“It’s not supposed to happen that way,” Lyons said. “We want to understand why that is.”
“Heejeong separated the data into when the solar wind was fluctuating a lot and when it was fluctuating a little,” he added. “When the interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations are low, she saw the pattern everyone knows, but when she analyzed the pattern when the interplanetary magnetic field was fluctuating strongly, that pattern completely disappeared. Instead, the strength of the flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations.
“So rather than the picture of the connection between the magnetic field of the sun and the Earth controlling the transfer of energy by the solar wind to the Earth’s magnetosphere, something else is happening that is equally interesting. The next question is discovering what that is. We have some ideas of what that may be, which we will test.”
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” – Lord Kelvin
Even great minds can be way off the mark.
Hmmm… They knew about DC solar current, but just discovered AC. Now the picture looks more complete. Now on to capacitors and inductors.
a stream of ionized particles translated into laymen’s common sense language = AN ELECTRICAL CURRENT.
I suspect that any additional energy transfer will be deemed irrelevant to climate unless it confirms the preferred component analysis of bristlecone pines, Yamal tree rings, disturbed Finnish Lake sediments and no more than two selected Antarctic weather stations.
Could that something else that is affecting the Earth also be what is affecting the Sun?
Having two bodies in the Solar System to watch for correlated effects would be a good test.
Hmmm……..
Nice find, UCLA.
Nogw’s post is interesting.
I am not remotely qualified to comment on the point, but there is a movement who hold that the Universe is essentially electrical in nature.:
http://thunderbolts.info/home.htm
I believe that engineers are inclined to sympathise with the views expressed there, and suspect the gravitational view of the Universe is seriously incomplete.
What says Leif?
Off topic, but heard at a UK summer party:
“I know the Met Office forecast a barbeque summer – I need a barbeque right now to keep my hands warm…”
This news is not new for me…
http://www.biocab.org/Cosmic_Rays_Climate_Change.html
My hypothesis was the opposite to Svensmark’s and Shaviv’s hypotheses, but now you can see I was not wrong.
What effect, if any, on the global energy budget?
It just goes to show, the more we learn today, the less we knew yesterday.
However, the science must be already settled.
Cannot find Leifs entries on this But I’m sure he has said the energy transported by the solar wind is small. In the mean time there is this snippet:
[comet] Dust tails however point in a slightly different direction, suggesting they are moved by sunlight pressure, and not by the solar wind
“There are things that the White man knows, but there are things that he
doesn’t know.”attr.-Standing Bear, Blackfoot Chief.
This sounds like no one even has a clue.
I am sympathetic to the Electrical Universe people..
BTW-back in February, was there not a Magnetar impact on the upper atmosphere-with resultant warming?…
Here a more complete assessment:
http://www.biocab.org/Cosmic_Rays_Graph.html
Jim (10:13:03) :
This means that now there is likely to be a big move to investigate global warming along the imaginary axis.
Here’s the question: How does this event reaching the magnetosphere affect the tropospheric climate?
In fact, the magnetosphere keeps the planet& climate stable. Without it, we’d be wobbling all over the place, and so would our climate. Apparently, the earth has decreased strength 40% (reputed) of its magnetosphere in the last 50 years. The solar wind blasts the earths magnetic field and alters its emissions and alters its orbial axis. There was a significant blast of this nature in 2001
“Jack Eddy is smiling and holding up the patch cord he’s been given at last, wondering how long it will be before we find all the connectors.”
I am thinking . . . probably never. We keep thinking we know everything about cells too. OOPS! Something new, again.
See the following for an examination of the influence of the earth and solar magnetic fields on global temperatures: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/EarthMagneticField.htm
My unit solar wind is 1 proton/cm^3 velocity 100 km/S gives a solar wind energy dump of 1.6x10E-4 Joules/m^2/S, or 1.6x10E-4 W/m^2
Lenz’a Law comes to mind… and the conservation of energy…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz's_law
Although the researchers do not provide the figure, I’m sure the amount of energy received by the earth through this mechanism will be tiny and have no bearing on the warming we’ve experienced over the last 30 years due to CO2.
Thanks
William
Nasif Nahle (10:47:50) :
Possible double-whammy.
Solar wind dampened by inactivity and Interstellar medium, and Earth’s magnetic field also weakening over the last 50 years.
For the Sun, which came first chicken or egg – does the Sun’s activity alone depend on internal variations or is it directly affected by the Interstellar Medium during which the solar wind is backed off?
For Earth it’s neither here nor there: Lack of solar wind means we get more dosage of GCR’s irregardless of why the solar wind is backed off.
or—
For Earth it’s double indemnity as not only is the solar wind backed off but the intersellar medium backs of Earth’s magnetic field…double whammy. If this is correct it means David Archibald’s prediction of GCR’s counts going through the roof are a few bands of Interstellar Medium away.
Plenty to chew on.
Extract from above
“UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth’s magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.”
In 1945 the Jet stream was discovered.
We progress our knowledge in fits and starts, each advance illustrating how little we knew before. Nowhere is this more true than in climate science, where we are only at the beginning of the process and not at the end.
Tonyb
By golly that Maxwell fellow may just have something there.
If I had my way, more discussions about Earth’s weather system would include the weather observed on other planets. For example,
1. Enormous dust devils on Mars, which has 1% of our atmosphere
2. Saturn’s hot northern pole, despite being in a shadow for 15 years
3. windspeeds on the gas giants (COLD!)
4. lightning on Venus
But that is a tall order.
My unit solar wind is 1 proton/cm^3 velocity 100 km/S gives a solar wind energy dump of 1.6×10E-4 Joules/m^2/S, or 1.6×10E-4 W/m^2
Oh, and proton energy of 10keV.
William (11:40:58) :
Nothing will have bearing on the “warming of the past thirty years due to CO2” as there hasn’t been any.
Alan Cheetham (11:06:07) :Extraordinary work!
William (11:40:58) : Stop breathing!
Nasif Nahle (10:47:50) : Some teratogenic products of increased GCR could be found in some recent generations of gwrs. ! 🙂
Don’t some people claim that global warming shows up at the poles first? Aren’t the poles where the solar wind has the greatest effect?
Could this be why the poles heat first?
“It’s poetry in motion
And now she’s making love to me
The spheres’re in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
“She blinded me with science!”
And hit me with technology”
Electrical joule heating of the atmosphere at lower elevations of the ionosphere as proposed by MAKAROVA,L.N?
Curioser and curioser.
Looks like the dynamics are a lot more complicated than we thought.
Shoulda read that box more closely before we bought the puzzle; it’s not a 300 piece puzzle but a 1,000 piece puzzle — perhaps.
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
I haven’t read any more than the press release above, and I’m utterly unqualified to evaluate this work. But when I read the sentence
“Heejeong used detailed statistical analysis to prove this phenomenon is real.”
I cringed reflexively. As we all know, “detailed statistical analysis” can be used or misused to tease a signal out of noisy data. I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that I hope others more qualified than I will take a good hard look at this.
Confirmation is important — and that is what this paper helps do.
A number of us who comment on this website have stated that charged particles in ordered motion, electrons and ions, are an electric current and this is a source of energy from the Sun to the Earth that influences the Earth’s Climate.
There are prominate voices in the comment section, here, that have strongly disagreed with this idea.
But the emerging scientific evidence is continually demonstrating that ELECTRO-magnetism plays a vital role in astrophysical relationship of the Sun and Earth.
And the scientists reporting the discoveries are constantly “surprised”.
Why?
Because of their training, as the authors of this paper readily attest.
This failure to consider “electric currents in space” is the direct result of the education astrophysicists receive and the “leading lights” that maintain the status quo.
I give tremendous credit to the authors of this paper to follow the evidence to where it leads.
My experience is that the “experimentalists” are much better at following the evidence, that the academics and their acolytes.
Electric current and electromagnetism exist in space.
Those that say otherwise need to seriously re-evaluate with reasonable scepticism for sure, but more important with an open-mind.
There are some very closed-minded people in the astrophysical “community”.
matt v. (12:35:04) :
2. Processes of transmission energy of the solar wind into the near-Earth Space A new mechanism of the thermal heating of the atmosphere by the electric currents induced by the solar wind is proposed. This process is concentrated in the middle stratosphere (altitudes 20-
30 km) where a permanent layer of heavy ion-clusters is produced by the galactic cosmic rays and by some other sporadically occurring sources.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/129228.pdf
rbateman (11:45:29) :
Nasif Nahle (10:47:50) :
Possible double-whammy.
Solar wind dampened by inactivity and Interstellar medium, and Earth’s magnetic field also weakening over the last 50 years.
For the Sun, which came first chicken or egg – does the Sun’s activity alone depend on internal variations or is it directly affected by the Interstellar Medium during which the solar wind is backed off?
For Earth it’s neither here nor there: Lack of solar wind means we get more dosage of GCR’s irregardless of why the solar wind is backed off.
or—
For Earth it’s double indemnity as not only is the solar wind backed off but the intersellar medium backs of Earth’s magnetic field…double whammy. If this is correct it means David Archibald’s prediction of GCR’s counts going through the roof are a few bands of Interstellar Medium away.
Plenty to chew on.
And add to this the remnants of the supernova detected in 1976 (1, 2, 3) in which supposedly the solar system is already immersed and the anomaly of the intensity of interstellar cosmic rays in the Termination Shock of the solar system detected by the Voyagers in 2005 (4, 5) which are incoming freely to the Earth (6).
Indeed, indeed; there are many natural phenomena to chew up.
1. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1978ApJ…223..589V&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
2. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/528/2/756/40497.web.pdf?request-id=43ef59e3-b9b2-4a59-a737-ea5a9dcd28c9
3. http://www.biocab.org/Coplanarity_Solar_System_and_Galaxy.html
4. E. C. Stone et all. Voyager Explores the Termination Shock Region and the Heliosheat Beyond. Science; Vol. 309, pages 2017 – 2020. 23. September 2005.
5. R. B. Decker et all. Voyager 1 in the Foreshock, Termination Shock, and Heliosheat. Science; Vol. 309, pp 2020-2024. 23 September, 2005.
6. Cracks in Earth’s Magnetic Shield. NASA’s Website:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/03dec_magneticcracks.htm
Last reading on November 7th, 2005.
Leon Brozyna (12:36:21) :
Yeah, but a puzzle comes in a box where the final picture is on the lid.
This has to be much worse than that.
nogw
I’m sure you are already aware of the physics of plasmas (ionic current) so won’t preach but electrical current is associated with electron flow and the momentum forces and therefore their kinetic interactions are much smaller than ionic current which is the flow of +ion and -ions. Whilst not an expert on atmospheric physics I would imagine that the transfer of energy by a relatively very large ion on striking the molecules of the upper atmosphere might well be very painful for the molecule and leave it very excited. 🙂
Always The Sun
How many times have you woken up and prayed for the rain?
How many times have you seen the papers apportion the blame?
Who gets to say, who gets the work and who gets to play?
I was always told at school, everybody should get the same
How many times have you been told, if you don’t ask, you don’t get?
How many liars have taken your money, your mother said you shouldn’t
bet?
Who has the fun, is it always the man with a gun?
Someone must have told him, if you work too hard you can sweat
There’s always the sun (always the sun)
There’s always the sun
Always, always (always the sun)
How many times have the weathermen told you stories that made you
laugh?
I know it’s not unlike the politicians and the leaders
When they do things by half, who gets the job of pushing the knob?
That sort of responsibility you draw straws for, if you’re mad enough
There’s always the sun (always the sun)
There’s always the sun
Always, always (always the sun)
James F. Evans (12:50:02) :
Confirmation is important — and that is what this paper helps do.
A number of us who comment on this website have stated that charged particles in ordered motion, electrons and ions, are an electric current and this is a source of energy from the Sun to the Earth that influences the Earth’s Climate.
There are prominate voices in the comment section, here, that have strongly disagreed with this idea.
But the emerging scientific evidence is continually demonstrating that ELECTRO-magnetism plays a vital role in astrophysical relationship of the Sun and Earth.
As Tealc said: “Indeed”. I remember my professor of Physics, Dr. Mercado, talking about electric and magnetic currents:
“If you have not a wire or a cable, but only space, a variable magnetic flux invariably produces an electric field in the space. Conversely, if you have not a magnet, but only space, a variable electric flux invariably produces a magnetic field in the space.” (Class of physics by Dr. Roberto Mercado, PhD. 1974).
I don’t know where the idea of an asymmetry between the magnetic and the electric fields came from.
Nogw:
Check! 🙂 🙂 😀
The question that no one has asked: How that energy is supposed to be transferred to, say, the ocean?, because if only to the atmosphere it wouldn’t work further, like preparing your breakfast with you hair dryer; then we can only guess it could be like preparing the same breakfast with that kind of water boilers that work by shortcircuiting electricity: through lightning?.
Quite right, no surprise here for some of us. But what would you expect when even the physicists continue to ignore basic physics? People such as William might be partially correct about the additional input from the sun not accounting for a total 150 W/m^2 , but they are absolutely wrong about a basic fact – the earth has it’s own spatially and temporally varying magnetic field, and that produces both horizontal and vertical electrical currents running through the atmosphere. Since the gasses of which the atmosphere is composed have 2 basic electrical properties – high resistance and low conductivity – any first year physics student should be able to describe the end result in a single word.
BTW, what is commonly termed TSI is, in fact, electromagnetic energy. But what does a lowly spectroscopist know?
Think these guys were looking for the Hansen’s “fountain of global warming youth” among the clouds and they didn’ t get it that low but a higher altitude…
There were a couple of books about the effect of the magnetosphere on the climate
A Fresh Approach to Magnetism (Watson, 2006), and
“Why we are experiencing Global Warming” (Watson, 2007),
When you think of it, all those positive particles coming from the sun – electons in magnetic/micro waves hitting our magnetosphere – one solar blast can produce enough energy to the equivalent of a billion atomic bombs. This is enough to change our climate. If we receive more energy then we get more cloud and coolness for some time (Oceans, and not the atmosphere regulate our climate). There is a 6 year delay between high solar power and the cooling it gives rise to. A lot of solar physicists and oceanographers were predicting global cooling in 2002 for 2008, whilst climatologists were warning of the hottest years on record. And 6 years hence…
LAShaffer (13:20:14)
Glad you wrote that about the earth’s magnetosphere: It varies enormously from 40,000kn on the day part of the earth though many times that on the night side. Cosmic rays can really penetrate right through it and collide with the atmosphere
Well I got turned on to solar mysteries and earth links by Dr “Willie” Wei-Hock Soon’s book:- “The Maunder Minimum, and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection.”
Which is not to claim that Dr Soon pre-empted the present authors; but he certainly did point out (at least to me) that the TSI is only a part of the total physical linkage, and likely energy transfers.
I can’t say I understand all of Soon’s book as to that subject, but I bet he is interested in this recent “discovery”.
Maybe Leif can simplify it somewhat for us non-solar physicists, if the authors haven’t already done so.
George
Nogw (13:19:14)
as we understand it, Shortwave solar radiation penetrates stright through the atmosphere, which is invisible to Sw radiation – and yes, that includes c02 and high-mid level water vapour. Greenhouse gases don’t “trap” or intercept this sort of radiation, and then it adds heat to the oceans which can trasfer it via convection to other parts of the oceans
“”” stephen.richards (13:08:29) :
nogw
I’m sure you are already aware of the physics of plasmas (ionic current) so won’t preach but electrical current is associated with electron flow and the momentum forces and therefore their kinetic interactions are much smaller than ionic current which is the flow of +ion and -ions. Whilst not an expert on atmospheric physics I would imagine that the transfer of energy by a relatively very large ion on striking the molecules of the upper atmosphere might well be very painful for the molecule and leave it very excited. 🙂 “””
Well actually, electrical “current” is associated with the flow of CHARGE (Q), and the positive direction of current flow, is defined as the direction of net flow of charge; from positive (Voltage) to negative. The minor fact that the electron itself and its mass may move in the opposite direction is irrelevent; current flows from positive to negative; no matter the species of charge carrying particle.
So the early researchers goofed, and got their amber mixed up with their silk, so the elctron ended up negative charged. Same thing as why Matter survived and anti-matter didn’t; what fool is going to call the surviving species anti-matter ??
George
Nasif Nahle (13:18:43) :
I don’t know where the idea of an asymmetry between the magnetic and the electric fields came from.
My dear Nasif, you are a biologist…evidently it came from another asymmetry… in the brain (of the beholder), which clearly produces the separation of reasoning from feeling; in other words reasoning from common sense.
Its funny, I wrote a paper about this for a physics class in college and the professor said that it was bunk.
The idea is to model the solar/terrestrial interface as an electrical circuit. The Earth is an RLC circuit (R is the Earth, L and C being the ionosphere/Earth with the atmosphere being the dielectric) and that solar activity modulates (powers) this circuit.
I will even make a prediction that the magnitude of this effect can be noted by measuring the total global lightning. A prediction would be that during low solar activity that lightning is less when averaged across the globe. Think of it this way, the atmosphere, being a dielectric, is more often violated by the large electrical currents in the atmosphere. In the polar regions this is dissipated through the aurora, and nearer the tropics it is through classic dielectric bleed through as understood by the theory of capacitors.
None of this energy transfer is noted in any direct TSI measurement that only measures visible/near IR energy.
“We were looking to do something else, when we saw life is not the way we expected it to be,”
A good statement for all scientists to remember.
Don’t have the physics myself, only a geo, but instinct keeps saying there’s so much more to learn about solar- and geo-magnetism. And what a great success the Ulysses mission was. How many warmists have even heard of it.
Nogw (13:19:14) :
The question that no one has asked: How that energy is supposed to be transferred to, say, the ocean?
It doesn’t have to be. The rate of energy transfer (heat) from earth through the atsmosphere is not linear, but related to the difference in energy at each level. The greater the difference, the faster the transfer. If you warm up the outer reaches of the atsmosphere through this mechanism you reduce the rate of transfer (heat) from the earth, with an appropriate time lag.
Nogw (13:19:14) :
The question that no one has asked: How that energy is supposed to be transferred to, say, the ocean?
Cloud modulation.
It doesn’t take a very big change in cloud cover to make a big difference to the amount of direct solar energy absorbed and subsequently discharged by the ocean. We already know from Shaviv that there is an approx seven – ten times amplification of the variation in TSI over the solar cycle. The degree to which this affects oceanic energy absorption/emission is masked by the way the ocean behaves: More emission at solar min, more absorption/retention at solar max.
The solar wind was getting a lot stronger over the C20th until the mid ’90’s. Cloud cover was dropping from the start of the satellite era until the late ’90’s
The dots are joining up.
Re: Robert Wood (11:14:39)
“My unit solar wind is 1 proton/cm^3 velocity 100 km/S gives a solar wind energy dump of 1.6×10E-4 Joules/m^2/S, or 1.6×10E-4 W/m^2
Oh, and proton energy of 10keV.”
I wonder what the total energy is given the total amount of protons, the area of the upper atmosphere, and the amount of time the energy is hitting the atmosphere during a given day.
Why does this post put me in mind of Nir Shaviv? 😉
So here’s another mechanism that indicates amplification of energy from the sun. The sun has been quiet for more than 2 1/2 years so there is less energy coming from the sun making for less warming.
How much cooler will it get on earth if the sun continues to be inactive?
P Wilson (13:23:45) : There is a 6 year delay between high solar power and the cooling it gives rise to. A lot of solar physicists and oceanographers were predicting global cooling in 2002 for 2008, whilst climatologists were warning of the hottest years on record. And 6 years hence…
So what are they predicting for 6 years from now?
Where are the abstracts of the two papers?
P. Wilson writes: (Oceans, and not the atmosphere regulate our climate).
Yet ERBE satellite measured the radiation bilan. The total transfered energy from that bilan shows that the atmosphere transfers huge quantity of energy compared to the ocean. The meteorological data give the value for oceans and atmosphere value is the difference. The energy transfered by the atmopshere is in the 30-50 degres latitude 6 to 10 times more than oceans. (source CEA)
Nogw (13:19:14) :
I’m just thinking here; convection and conduction, over large areas and long time periods would go quite nicely. If the heat is transfered to the magnetosphere or the ionosphere, it’s eventually going either into the ocean or back into space.
Just a tiny fraction of a couple billion trigawatts over a couple of years. And once the energy is inside the thermos, it’s there. Very hard to get back out.
You can heat your breakfast with that hairdryer; it just takes longer. (Don’t try it though, the eggs get all rubbery and the french toast just turns into mush, nevermind what it does to the pancakes and bacon).
And there was I, describing the passage of solar energy through the Earth system as being like a pair of independently variable electrical resistors in series (ocean and air).
The circulations in the oceans introduce variability in the flow which the circulations in the air have to counter in order to ensure that energy in approximately equals energy out.
A huge slow oceanic flywheel and a small fast flywheel in the air.
A bit of a mix of analogies but it looks plausible to me.
By the way this makes the study and understanding of the lower layers of the atmosphere critical and makes Marcel Leroux’ work THE pre-eminent framework for such studies. http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences/meteorology/book/978-3-642-04679-7
Great stuff, this is why I love science. No matter how much we think we know we never know you know? Reminds us all that it is impossible for humans to know universal laws, only assume we know based on our experience of their effects. “We thought it was known”. Personally I prefer not to think of science as what we know but different degrees of what we believe; the grey area between tautology and self-contradiction. The science is never settled.
And once again our star batter doesn’t get around on the pitch. Now this is one Homeric slump.
Antonio San (14:28:00)
I don’t think it matters how much energy passes through ocean or air.
What matters is how long that energy takes to pass through ocean or air.
The longer it takes between absorption and re radiation the higher the temperature will become (the resistor effect). Thus the oceanic effect on the Earth’s temperature at any given moment is so large that the effect of the air is negligible.
Yet AGW theory requires that the air be solely responsible for setting the temperature so that tiny changes in the air can destabilise the system. Clearly wrong.
Antonio:
What sort of radiation are we talking about? If its SW radiation then that comes stright from the sun and not the troposphere. the troposphere is where our climate takes place. The air has a very low heat capacity, which is why the temerature falls when the sun goes down. Oceans on the other hand have a very high heat capacity, which is why they emit so much heat. On the otherhand, re-emitted longwave radiation cannot penetrate oceans, since its too weak a feedback.
Gene Nemetz (14:14:46
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12433.full.pdf
I don’t know about the next six years, but it will depend on solar variability now. This above suggests that the next few centuries will be cooling, with the occasional minor warm periods, pretty much what we’re used to
Welcome to the Plasma Model, folks and the connection is called electricity though today they still call it “cosmic rays”.
This is a very interesting paper, it will be fun to watch the science develop in this area.
As mentioned above, several of us have in the past, proposed that there is a missing energy transfer mechanism out there between the Sun and the Earth and a very good candidate to look at is electrical and magnetic coupling, and induced electrical currents in the atmosphere and the earth.
It was just a decade ago or so that scientists began to take seriously other recently discovered electrical events in the high atmosphere, like Sprite and Elf events noted during thunderstorms at very high altitudes.
As demonstrated by both nuclear EMP and solar storms, large amounts of energy can be coupled to the earth by electromagnetic mechanisms, and if ignored or unknown, that energy input integrated over a years time would be sizable.
I do not have the advanced physics skills to weigh in on the details, but it would not surprise me if they have found the first hint of new energy inputs that are currently unaccounted for in the earths energy balance.
Only time will tell, since this is just a hypothesis at this point, and needs some testing and quantification before the physicists take a whack at falsifying the concept.
Larry
Aron (13:10:45) :
Always The Sun
Thanks for that. Great band, great song and it’s been a while …
P. Wilson, the reference is here:
http://www.cea.fr/recherche_fondamentale/terre_et_environnement
check the first pdf file 529kb.
Figure 1:
“À gauche, bilan radiatif, correspondant à la différence entre l’énergie reçue du Soleil et celle réémise vers l’espace, en fonction de la latitude.
Cette courbe résulte des campagnes ERBE de mesures par satellite (Earth Radiation Budget Experiment).
À droite, bilan du transport d’énergie par l’atmosphère et les océans. Le transport total est mesuré par satellite (campagnes ERBE). Le transport
par l’océan est déduit de données météorologiques. Le transport par l’atmosphère est obtenu par différence. Ce transport d’énergie est considérable.”
Auroral Birkeland currents can carry about 1 million amperes. They can heat up the upper atmosphere which results in increased drag on low-altitude satellites.
http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Birkeland_current
Fälthammar, Carl-Gunne, “Magnetospheric plasma interactions”, Astrophysics and Space Science (ISSN 0004-640X), vol. 214, nos. 1-2, Proceedings of the second United Nations/European Space Agency Workshop, Bogota, Colombia, 9-13 November, 1992, UN/ESA Workshops Vol. 3, p. 3-17.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/x1036828r2u1v123/
It is hard to believe this is news or new science. It seems to me
we discussed this in undergraduate physics classes in the 1980s.
Physical Oceanography taught by Dr. Elroy Orvil Lacasce.
Consider the earth as a rotating body in free space with no
magnetic field. There are no interactions, so there is no work
done, so there is no energy transfer.
But our earth has a magnetic moment that is not aligned with
its rotational axis. That means that if the rotating earth with is
non-aligned magnetic field is seen as a variable magnet field
from any other point in space.
This variable magnet also has a surface that is mostly a good
conductor.
Add the sun into the picture, which adds a variable magnetic
and electrical field, and change the point of view to the surface
of the sun. The earth is still a rotating conductor with a
rotating, variable magnetic field. The field of the earth interacts
with the fields generated by the sun.
Of course there are voltages and currents. Every interaction
surface for both fields should have energy transfer and energy
radiation. There is no way to not have currents.
Thermal heating of the oceans is dead simple, and works just
like an induction cooktop or MRI machine. The average spin
axis of the atoms of the water molecules is the magnetic axis
of the earth. The stronger the solar fields, the more the more the
atomic spin axes deviate in their daily trip around the earth from
sun side to shade side.
One can demonstrate this effect with a glass of water in an MRI
machine. Variable magnetic field + water = heat.
If the sun quiets down, the oceans will trap less heat.
If I have just explained how it all works, please deliver the Nobel
Prize to my house. My wife will be impressed.
Antonio San (14:16:31) :
Where are the abstracts of the two papers?
Sorry, no abstracts because they were written with educational purposes and they are only graphs and diagrams with brief explanations. I am thinking to write the two articles in only one piece (paper) and will include the abstract. Probably Ann V. would discipline me for the omissions.
I should say that almost all trends on the graphs were described from baseline zero.
“”” P Wilson (13:39:42) :
Nogw (13:19:14)
as we understand it, Shortwave solar radiation penetrates stright through the atmosphere, which is invisible to Sw radiation – and yes, that includes c02 and high-mid level water vapour. Greenhouse gases don’t “trap” or intercept this sort of radiation, and then it adds heat to the oceans which can trasfer it via convection to other parts of the oceans “””
I wish people would stop saying that short wave solar radiation penetrates straight through the atmosphere and adds heat to the oceans.
First off some sanity checks. Based on some slightly out of date data from “The Infra-Red Handbook” Out of date in that they use TSI numbers like 1353 or 1322 W/m^2, which are 1940-50s values. The sun approximates a black body at about 5770 K for best match to a 1353 TSI (so slightly higher today for 1366), and has its spectral peak at about 460nm wavelength where the spectral irradiance is 2006 W/m^2 per micron of spectral width. A BB spectrum emits almost exactly 25% of its total energy at wavelengths shorter than the peak wavelength, so 1/4 of sol is below 460 nm and 3/4 above that.
At 300nm wavelength in the UV, the specral emittance is 514 W/m^2 per micron or about 1/4 of the peak value. BUT now lets go down to the earth’s surface at an angle of 60 degrees; corresponding to Air Mass =2.0
For some reason they change TSI to 1322, so these numbers are a few percent low, but the spectral peak is now at 500 nm instead of 460, at a spectral irradiance of 1215 W/m^2 per micron. So now what do we have for the short wave UV that goes “straight through the atmosphere”.
At 301 nm the spectral irradiance has dropped from its 514 value down to 0.177 W/m^2 per micron; at 302 nm it is 0.342, and at 303 nm it is 0.647. Do you get the picture of this short wave solar energy crashing its way through the atmosphere; it is attenuated from 514 down to 0.177, and diving at supersonic speed. It doesn’t reach 1/4 of the 1215 peak till about 375 nm wavelength.
That is hardly a huge amount of energy to add to the heat prostration of the poor oceans; and it doesn’t fare any better in the oceans; dropping by three orders of magnitude in absorption coefficient in the space of about 10 nm drop in wavelength. From 300nm down to about 180 nm the water absorption coefficient increases 4 orders of magnitude from 0.01 cm^-1 up to 100 cm^-1.
So NO ! short wave solar UV does not blast straight through the atmosphere, and it gets brought up short in the ocean surface. A coefficient of 100 cm^-1 means that the irradiance drops to 1/e (37%) of its value in 100 microns of water thickness; not quite as bad as the atmosphere emitted IR at 15 microns, where the absorption coefficient is 1000 cm^-1, so it drops to 1/e in 10 microns, and at three microns, where fortunately there isn’t much IR from either sun or air, the water absorption coefficient is about 8000 cm^-1. The IR absorption coefficient exceeds the 200 nm UV coefficient beyond about 1.5 microns, where there still is some solar irradiance; but no atmospheric IR to speak of.
The earth’s atmospehre is very unkind to wavelengths that the human eye cannot see; on the other hand the ocean water is very kind to the wavelengths that the sun likes to emit, and the human eye likes to look at, for they are the ones that propagate deepest, and at 460 nm where the solar spectrum peaks, and near the eye best wavelength, the water absorption coefficient is about 10^-4 cm^-1, so it is attenuated down to 37% in about 100 metres of clean oceanic water.
So please don’t look to either IR or UV to warm the oceans; the UV isn’t going to do diddley; and the long wave IR is at best going to promote prompt surface evaporation, and return that energy back to the atmosphere, along with some cloud forming water vapor to cool things down again.
George
All those words in that post, and nowhere does it say how much energy they are talking about.
The only quantification I saw was Robert Wood’s, who puts it at 10 million times smaller than TSI.
REPLY: Complain to UCLA, not us. The press release is verbatim from UCLA. Follow the link. Perhaps they have not studied it long enough to give an accurate quantification yet. When discovering something new, quantification is usually the second phase. – A
P Wilson (14:56:11) : This above suggests that the next few centuries will be cooling
Piers Corbyn, who uses the sun as the main ingredient in his weather forecasting, has this to say about the next 100 years :
Piers Corbyn, weatheraction 100 year Forecast
Wow the BBC reported this – how did this slip past the editors knife?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8249668.stm
Prof. Syun Akasofu (yes, the same man as in the WUWT post from September 1) constructed about 3 decades ago the epsilon parameter which illustrates nicely what this is about. But let’s start with the Earth’s geomagnetic field. It deflects this solar wind around the Earth at distances of typically 60000 km, far above the atmosphere (unlike planets Venus and Mars without significant internal magnetic fields where the solar wind hits directly the atmosphere). In the sixties it was discovered that also the solar wind carries an “interplanetary” magnetic field (IMF) with it, and that this IMF can reconnect with the geomagnetic field (yes, magnetic reconnection as in another WUWT post) producing “open” field lines on which some solar wind particles do actually get into the magnetosphere. The magnetic reconnection can also extract power from the solar wind (slowing it down a little), and roughly 1/3 to half of this power ends up in the upper atmosphere (above about 100 km altitude) and predominantly at high latitudes, driving winds up there, heating it and causing Aurora (Northern/Southern lights). Figuratively the otherwise quite perfect magnetic shield of the Earth is opened when the IMF and geomagnetic field (re)connect.
Reconnection occurs at the highest rate if these fields have an angle of 180 degrees to each other, are antiparallel. The geomagnetic field is northward (compass!), so the IMF must be southward to get maximum power out of the solar wind into the atmosphere. Akasofu suggested that
epsilon = 10^7 * v B^2 * (sin(theta/2))^4 L^2
describes approximately how much power in Watts is extracted from the solar wind having velocity v. B is the IMF magnitude in Tesla, and theta the IMF clock angle when looking along the line Sun-Earth, i. e. theta=180 degrees for southward. L is an “effective diameter” of the magnetosphere which in practice is fitted to measurements, 45000 km seems to be a good value. When epsilon exceeds about 100 GW for a few hours, one can expect geomagnetic disturbances and aurora to occur any time. The NOAA space weather web site shows v, B and theta in real time (using data from the ACE satellite circling the L2 point between the Earth and Sun): http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SWN/.
Clearly Akasofu’s epsilon does not take into account fluctuations of the IMF or v which seem to be relevant as described in the UCLA press release, and for northward IMF (theta=0) zero power transfer from the solar wind is predicted, but in reality it becomes only small, not zero. However, a main feature grasped by epsilon is not altered by the UCLA results: the large energy transfers from the solar wind occur when IMF is southward. We have estimated the power transfer over the entire magnetosphere in one of the largest geomagnetic storms of the previous solar maximum (Rosenqvist et al., JGR, 111, doi:10.1029/2006JA011608, 2006): 18 TeraWatts roughly half of which heats the upper atmosphere. This is still little compared to what a local thunderstorm in the troposphere can do. Energy transfer from the solar wind is too small to be relevant for climate.
Stephen Wilde (14:52:55) :
Wouldn’t a simple kitchen table experiment demonstrate this?
Take a glass or ceramic container a foot or so tall; fill to a depth of 1/5th with water (salt, or ocean, water preferable). Apply a lamp to it from the top; the light should have the same spectral characteristics as Sunshine at the Earth’s surface. Note the temperature changes in the air and the water; turn off the light and note again the changes. Make sure the thermometers are shielded from direct light.
I’d make a bet the water cools slower than it warms.
Also, do the experiment open and enclosed. With the enclosed version, change the air for CO2 and repeat. For mroe advanced experiments, one could add wind to the water surface with an electric fan and demonstrate how evaporation is the major cooling mechanism.
************
Joe Black (10:51:18) :
Jim (10:13:03) :
This means that now there is likely to be a big move to investigate global warming along the imaginary axis.
****************
It looks like many climate scientists are pretty far out on the imaginary axis already, although it has nothing to do with complex numbers.
Nick Stokes (16:38:34) :
My calculation was intended to enable anyone who goes to spaceweather.com to take the actual numbers at present and crudely estimate the energy influx, in Watts per metre squared.
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
I personally did not understand the report of the article at source for this post, but I can imagine electro-magnetic effects. However, I am of the albedo change school; it is clear and obvious that a small change in albedo can have a big impact on surface insolation. Now, charged particles would be very affective on cloud formation, thus albedo.
Interesting stuff to say the least.
By the way, I’ve just invented a huge dynamo which will solve the world’s energy problems. Wrap a wire all the way round the earth…. (Hmm? Is there enough copper?…)
Anthony (16:38:34):
Well, you posted it. If the energy flow is, as Robert Wood calculated, 10 million times less than TSI, then most of the discussion in this thread is way off beam. And noone seems to have any other idea.
Jimmy Haigh (17:33:55) :
Interesting stuff to say the least.
By the way, I’ve just invented a huge dynamo which will solve the world’s energy problems. Wrap a wire all the way round the earth…. (Hmm? Is there enough copper?…)
No need of copper, or silver, or platinum wire. Remember Tesla’s work (wireless power transmission)? Unfortunately, he carried their calculations and blueprints to his grave.
“Instead, the strength of the flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations.”
For those of us with electrical/electronics experience or training, this sets off bells and whistles. In an electromagnet inductor (such as the Earth is), “This implies that the component alternately absorbs energy from the circuit and then returns energy to the circuit. A pure reactance will not dissipate any power.”
Since the conductivity and permeability of the materials that make up the Earth electromagnetic inductor do not have zero impedance, this means there is not pure reactance, and thus the impure reactance will dissipate power transferred to it from the Sun as heat, and *CONCENTRATED AT THE POLES*, particularly the pole which absorbs most of the current.
Since ice in the Antarctic ice cap is mostly pure water ice, its impedance is high and conductivity is low. Arctic sea ice has a much higher conductivity, and thus should absorb more of the current there, and generate more heat as a result. This can explain arctic warming.
Joe Black (10:51:18) :
Jim (10:13:03) :
This means that now there is likely to be a big move to investigate global warming along the imaginary axis.
Joe, don’t you mean “movie” instead of “move!!!
http://thunderbolts.info/home.htm Very interesting!! Especially for an electronics engineer, like me. Now, how does planetary motion influence the solar plasma “electrically” since the opponents of the planetary connection “know” that gravity and/or angular momentum are too weak. Any comments from the scientists here?
like a needle, piercing and ripping a hole in the stagnant, arrogant mind
bravo
more of this please
More Solar-Earth effects to be studied:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N5/C2.php
Nick Stokes (17:34:17) barking at Anthony Watts: “Well, you posted it. If the energy flow is […] then most of the discussion in this thread is way off beam. And noone seems to have any other idea.”
These scientists (Heejeong Kim & Larry Lyons) make a fundamental discovery that clarifies that decades of assumptions were false – and this is your contribution to the discussion? – barking at the host & insulting the readership?
Of course oceans retain heat from the sun, and of course heat from the sun passes through the atmsphere. We’re not surrounded by a vacuum afterall
Lower solar energy in the upper atmosphere : making for cooling on earth. Lower solar energy allowing cosmic rays from outer space to enter the earth and create more clouds : making for cooling on earth.
Is this a double whammy of cooling from a quiet sun?
————————————————————-
Henrik Svensmark article from yesterday on cosmic rays and climate :
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fjp.dk%2Fopinion%2Fkronik%2Farticle1809681.ece&sl=da&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
But in 2006 after many years of work we managed to conduct experiments at DTU Space, where we demonstrated the existence of a physical mechanism. The cosmic radiation helps to form aerosols, which are the seeds for cloud formation.
Animation of cosmic rays creating aerosols :
Thanks moderator
Antonio, that, in translation, is an assumption taken from an equation, and certainly not an observed physical precept which looks, on the face of it as a rationalisation to exagerrate the re-emission of longwave radiation (Longwave as in low energy or low frequency, as opposed to shortwave, as in high energy/high frequency (although some disagree with these distinctions. They’re purely dictated by temperature). Since air doesn’t retain heat, it cannot give off radiation: It can only act as a conduit to transfer radiation just like oxygen allows combustion, but you couldn’t say that the oxygen was the combustion itself. Generally, radiation comes from the sun which is converted into heat when it strikes the earth. Solid matter retains some for a while, tho liquids like oceans retain it for much longer. Perhaps what you mean is that the air transports energy from oceans.
Its all about specific heat capacity and the properties of liquids as opposed to gases
Douglas DC (10:46:29) :
“There are things that the White man knows, but there are things that he
doesn’t know.”attr.-Standing Bear, Blackfoot Chief.
This sounds like no one even has a clue.
I am sympathetic to the Electrical Universe people..
BTW-back in February, was there not a Magnetar impact on the upper atmosphere-with resultant warming?…
It was January 21st and a HUGE and historic Suddent Stratospheric Warming event occurred in conjunction with the large GRB of the same date.
Maybe it was coincidental….maybe it was not…
Not out of the question, no doubt!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Paul Vaughan (20:05:18)
I was not barking at the host and insulting the readership. On the latter, I was simply pointing out that Wood had calculated a very small value, and noone had suggested any other figure. And I was saying that the host shouldn’t just say that a lack of quantitative info should be taken up with UCLA. He introduced the post with
. If you start a discussion that way, then it’s relevant whether the topic of the UCLA doc is a flux comparable to TSI, or less by seven orders of magnitude.
Also, under the heading:
Le suivi à long terme du CO2 atmosphérique
from the recherche fondamentale site in translation, it says “The systematic measure of c02 began in 1957 by the scientific american Charles Keeling”
In fact, it began over 100 years earlier. There are some 90,000 scientifically valid c02 measurements, mainly in excess of the measurements taken today, sometimes going up to 500-600ppm (valid through the pettenkofer process which is valid enough) thoughout the northern hemisphere. This has understandably been censored by university research centres and government backed institutes.
Nick Stokes (21:05:36) : “And I was saying that the host shouldn’t just say that a lack of quantitative info should be taken up with UCLA.”
Well then you should take it up with THEM. They are the authors of the research. Approach them. The burden of proof is on them…and on you if you are trying to discredit the research. This is just a blog. Lighten up.
Or…is this blog more important to you than you are willing to admit?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Stephan (16:54:25) : 18 TeraWatts roughly half of which heats the upper atmosphere. This is still little compared to what a local thunderstorm in the troposphere can do. Energy transfer from the solar wind is too small to be relevant for climate.
Sometimes a few numbers can really give focus. Here we have 18 TeraWatts as ‘small’. Even “too small”. Even “little” compared to a single thunderstorm.
Yet the AGW/CO2 thesis has that cow farts are stronger and tanks of gas are way stronger …
Hurricanes are measured in atomic bombs equivalent, yet my 100 W light bulb is going to reshape the planet.
Someone needs to send the AGW thesis folks off to basic math class.
Nick Stokes (21:05:36) :
Paul Vaughan (20:05:18)
I was not barking at the host and insulting the readership. On the latter, I was simply pointing out that Wood had calculated a very small value, and noone had suggested any other figure. And I was saying that the host shouldn’t just say that a lack of quantitative info should be taken up with UCLA. He introduced the post with
This gives a whole new meaning to “Total Solar Irradiance”. Instead of TSI, perhaps we should call the energy transfer that comes from the sun to the earth TSE for “Total Solar Energy” so that it includes the solar wind…
. If you start a discussion that way, then it’s relevant whether the topic of the UCLA doc is a flux comparable to TSI, or less by seven orders of magnitude.
The values I’ve seen for solar wind energy flux at 1 AU is about 1mW/m^2 which is consistent with Wood’s calculation.
Paul Vaughan (20:05:18) :
Nick Stokes (17:34:17) barking at Anthony Watts: “Well, you posted it. If the energy flow is […] then most of the discussion in this thread is way off beam. And noone seems to have any other idea.”
These scientists (Heejeong Kim & Larry Lyons) make a fundamental discovery that clarifies that decades of assumptions were false – and this is your contribution to the discussion? – barking at the host & insulting the readership?
Paul, please remember that old saying: “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you and annoys the pig.” Nick is just doing what he’s good at and doing the thing he knows how to do. Carping. The rest of us are enjoying the sense of discovery, the wonder of integrating new knowledge, the exploration of issues like “How big?”, “Does it matter or not?”, “How do we know?”, “What else does it mean?”, “What else might it impact?”, “WOW that’s cool!”, etc. And there is poor Nick saying nobody has “any other idea”. He is out in the cold mud and doesn’t understand why we like the fire of discovery so much. So please, don’t try to teach him about the fire. It will only frustrate you and annoy him. Just leave the gate to the wallow open and walk away…
“We thought there could not be strong convection and that the energy necessary for a substorm could not develop unless the interplanetary magnetic field is southward,” Lyons said. “I’ve said it and taught it. Now I have to say, ‘But when you have these fluctuations, which is not a rare occurrence, you can have substorms going off once an hour.’”
It is amazing what some people will say to acknowledge funding in the hope of ensuring further funding. There is nothing new in this. In my review of Geomagnetic Activity from May 1977 http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf I noted that [page 32]
“Due to ever-present fluctuations of the interplanetary magnetic field – considerably enhance after passage through the bow-shock – favorable conditions for connection occur often enough within a three-hour interval [over which we measure the activity] at so many places on the magnetopause as to give the impression that reconnection and hence geomagnetic activity occur for all orientations of the interplanetary magnetic field and varying in efficiency smoothly from a maximum for anti-parallel fields to a non-vanishing minimum for parallel fields”. This is old news.
Also, the energy in the solar wind is minuscule compared to that of TSI.
savethesharks (21:18:07) : “This is just a blog. Lighten up.”
No, Chris. This is a science blog with many knowledgeable people participating. Take it seriously.
P Wilson (21:08:23) :
Also, under the heading:
Le suivi à long terme du CO2 atmosphérique
from the recherche fondamentale site in translation, it says “The systematic measure of c02 began in 1957 by the scientific american Charles Keeling”
In fact, it began over 100 years earlier. There are some 90,000 scientifically valid c02 measurements, mainly in excess of the measurements taken today, sometimes going up to 500-600ppm (valid through the pettenkofer process which is valid enough) thoughout the northern hemisphere. This has understandably been censored by university research centres and government backed institutes.
There are reminicences of those measurements, however:
http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_225400.html
[OSHA classifies the carbon dioxide like a simple asfixiant, not a pollutant nor a toxic substance].
From our article on Carbon Dioxide and Life published at biocab.org: “The US Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) determined empirically the standard average for outdoor CO2 from 350 to 600 ppmv.”
OSHA holds some valuable information, but have eliminated the standard average for outdoor CO2.
ASHRAE recquires you to pay for the information. It was absolutely free until the last year (2009).
We obtained the information when OSHA had not “adjusted” the information and ASHRAE was a non-profit organization.
George E Smith (16:29:10)
Thanks for the exposition about the effect of different wavelengths on water. I’ve asked Leif about that a couple of times without an adequate response.
It seems that the visible part of the spectrum is more significant in relation to ocean energy content than either UV or IR.
No adverse effect on my climate description from that.
As regards this thread the general principle that electrical type processes are at all relevant is the main point. That clearly adds a new type of variability and a new level of complexity especially at the air/space interface.
However small the effect it is bound to have an influence on rates of energy flow at the critical boundaries between sun/sea, sea/air, air/space and as I have said so often it is the variable rates of flow at each boundary that make all the difference to the energy balance that results in climate changes.
What we have here is variability at all levels from the sun, from internal ocean behaviour and from circulations in the air. Indeed the solar variability is more complex than previously recognised (as this thread demonstrates) because the energy from the sun is comprised of many different types of energy all of which have different behavioural characteristics.
Yet despite all that variability in the speeds at which components of the Earth system process the different components of the the solar energy flow there has to be a fundamentally stable outcome whereby energy received approximately matches energy departing over geological time scales.
Otherwise we would not be here to puzzle over it all.
The gist of all my ideas is that what we observe as climate is the balancing process in action and as most of us here can clearly see there is so much variability involved on every scale of size and speed within each of the components (sun, sea, air and space) that changing by a tiny amount the quantity of a tiny proportion of an individual tiny component of something as weak in it’s influence as the air alone is not going to make a measurable difference to anything.
savethesharks (20:55:44) :
Yes, I remember that, and whatever agency (NASA I think) reporting on it said “Like charges are supposed to repel, but the Earth’s shields went down, and it got through”.
So, this finding that things can get stormy even when the IMF is like polarity, we saw a whopper on Jan 21st.
Murray Duffin (19:00:28) :
http://thunderbolts.info/home.htm Very interesting!! Especially for an electronics engineer, like me. Now, how does planetary motion influence the solar plasma “electrically” since the opponents of the planetary connection “know” that gravity and/or angular momentum are too weak. Any comments from the scientists here?
Jupiter emits more energy than it absorbs. There are a couple of Russian papers on Jupiter’s effect on the heliospheric current sheet and IMF.
Robert Wood (17:20:52) :
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
I am of the albedo change school; it is clear and obvious that a small change in albedo can have a big impact on surface insolation. Now, charged particles would be very affective on cloud formation, thus albedo.
Spot on Robert. So on the electro-magnetic front, we now have four variables in play WRT atmospheric ionisation/cloud nucleation.
GCR variation modulated by the solar cycle – decadal
Variation in Earth’s magnetic field strength – multi-decadal/centennial
Solar wind strength variation – decadal-centennial
Motion of solar system through varying interstellar medium – centennial – millenial – longer
Although as we’ve been told, the science is settled. /sarc
tallbloke (23:43:39) :
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
It is more than a thousand times smaller…
Stephen Wilde (23:12:36) :
The gist of all my ideas is that what we observe as climate is the balancing process in action and as most of us here can clearly see there is so much variability involved on every scale of size and speed within each of the components (sun, sea, air and space) that changing by a tiny amount the quantity of a tiny proportion of an individual tiny component of something as weak in it’s influence as the air alone is not going to make a measurable difference to anything.
I don’t think we know enough yet to make judgements about the size of difference small changes in any of the components make. Perhaps small changes in total ionisation and co2 do both make a difference, but because they are balanced with other changes, say in ozone, plankton growth, wind speeds and dust elevation, that tends to move the system as a whole to equilibrium through an overall negative feedback effect.
The observed fact that the Earth’s climates (plural) are changeable and dynamic suggests to me that the various components of the system are highly sensitive to small changes in the space environment, but that in concert, they balance each other out sufficiently well to keep most of Earth within a habitable range of temperatures, precipitation, and soil/ocean fertility.
Humans and other higher animals manage to live everywhere but the extreme polar environments and the extreme desert and have done so through ice ages and hot house periods. As you point out, the sytem must tend around either limit of a bi-polar stability or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.
Leif Svalgaard (23:59:39) :
tallbloke (23:43:39) : Quoting Robert Wood:
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
It is more than a thousand times smaller…
So is the thorn in the elephants foot.
Leif Svalgaard (22:18:23) : “… This is old news.”
A startling demonstration of the force of the web. Within hours of something shiny attracting attention we are snapped back to reality. Would have taken a minimum of days, more likely months, and perhaps never prior to the world wide web… and blogs.
(Trust you have strong teeth, Leif. This would have caused me to grind mine away.)
Nick Stokes (21:05:36) “I was not barking at the host and insulting the readership.”
We can agree to disagree.
tallbloke (00:09:46) :
Leif Svalgaard (23:59:39) :
tallbloke (23:43:39) : Quoting Robert Wood:
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
It is more than a thousand times smaller…
So is the thorn in the elephants foot.
tallbloke (00:09:46) :
“Leif Svalgaard (23:59:39) :
tallbloke (23:43:39) : Quoting Robert Wood:
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
It is more than a thousand times smaller…
So is the thorn in the elephants foot.”
Agree with you Tallbloke, an electical ciercuit only needs a small switch to turn on massive power.
The earth climate system seem pretty robust when dealing with large scale TSI through the hydrological cycle, but perhaps not so good at dealing with electrical imbalance which is concentrated mainly at the poles.
tallbloke (00:09:46) :
but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
“It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
So is the thorn in the elephants foot.
Does nothing for the original statement and is thus void of relevance.
Roger Carr (01:00:24) :
A startling demonstration of the force of the web. Within hours of something shiny attracting attention we are snapped back to reality.
But also of the problem with the web: it is too easy to spread misinformation. Cuts both ways.
tallbloke (23:33:53) :
Jupiter emits more energy than it absorbs.
Jupiter shining on the Sun has even less effect than Jupiter shining on the Earth…
Leif Svalgaard (03:53:37) : “But also of the problem with the web: it is too easy to spread misinformation. Cuts both ways.”
Far too easy to spread misinformation; but it does give the average Jo/anne a chance to look, listen, and fight back far more readily than when power controlled the major presses.
In this, I’ll take feast over famine, and roll with the odd bout of dyspepsia…
Tenuc (02:48:51) :
Agree with you Tallbloke, an electical ciercuit only needs a small switch to turn on massive power.
Except there is no massive power to be turned on as the energy [kinetic, magnetic, electric, whatever] in the solar wind is absolutely negligible compared to TSI. As I type this, the solar wind delivers 25 million times less power to the Earth system than TSI. During rare geomagnetic storms, the factor drops to about a million.
Leif Svalgaard (03:51:35) :
tallbloke (00:09:46) :
but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.
“It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
So is the thorn in the elephants foot.
Does nothing for the original statement and is thus void of relevance.
Ok Leif, this is the second time you’ve misattributed the original statement to me to I’ll reply.
1)The 2W/m^2 supposedly due to co2 is calculated from a rise in co2 compared to a rise in temperature which underplayed other factors which are now becoming apparent as stronger players than previously thought.
2)We don’t know yet the degree to which changes in atmospheric ionisation can affect albedo, so making a comparison of the power relationship between changes in solar wind and an unknown, and an unknown forcing for co2 and global temperature seems to be a spurious thing to do.
3)As Tenuc alludes to above, the relatively small wattage changes in solar wind variation might act like a small relay current which connects and disconnects a much more powerful circuit – modulation of 1366W/m^2 insolation by cloud. To compare this with a 2W/m^2 radiative forcing from co2 is not comparing apples with apples and therefore doesn’t tell us much about the relative importance of co2 changes versus solar wind changes.
Leif Svalgaard (04:06:05) :
tallbloke (23:33:53) :
Jupiter emits more energy than it absorbs.
Jupiter shining on the Sun has even less effect than Jupiter shining on the Earth…
It could be that Jupiter’s effect on the heliospheric current sheet and interplanetary magnetic field turn out to be more important than the Jupiter shine on sun or earth.
We should not limit the terms of the debate when we know so little about the subtle effects of electromagnetic interactions at the interplanetary scale.
I’ll try to find the references to the Russian papers on this stuff so we can have a slightly better informed debate.
So the effect is small … but, how is this effect spread geographically? If it is limited then even a small effect could affect that region significantly and we would have to understand how that region played in the overall dynamics of the Earth’s climate.
Remember climate is a chaotic system and even if this has no more strength than a butterfly’s wings …
Ok, so the Earth has a strong vertical electric field. Would change in charged particles at the poles affect this field globally?
Would extra field encourage or inhibit tropical Cu-Nims?
Roger Carr (04:58:56) :
In this, I’ll take feast over famine, and roll with the odd bout of dyspepsia…
That would be nice, except that it is more like ‘the odd bout of good information’. The feast is the junk.
Sandy (06:03:42) :
Ok, so the Earth has a strong vertical electric field. Would change in charged particles at the poles affect this field globally?
The vertical electric field is generated by tropical thunderstorms that are hardly influenced by what goes on at the poles.
Leif 4:59:20
You point out yourself a phenomenon of the sun which varies by a factor of 25. That variance is enough to explain climate variation, if it is the mechanism. Now, how is it damped, so as not to make the system hypersensitive?
====================================
It’s a mechanism not particularly sensitive to earthly feedback, stemming instead from seemingly chaotic solar phenomenon. That would damp hypersensitivity. Or am I just way off base with unquantified speculation?
========================================
Thanks Leif for confirming my intuition regarding the magnitude of this effect earlier in the thread!
Bob Kurtz 13:19
The atmosphere does not store heat, the ocean does. As Leif mentions, this “effect” is a thousand times smaller than the warming caused by CO2 thus it does not even have the capability to warm the atmo much less store heat in the oceans.
Robert Wood 12:11
I don’t believe in “catastrophic AGW” myself, but I do not believe you can produce a credible skeptic that does not believe that the 120 PPM of CO2 that has been pumped into the atmo has not increased global temperatures at all during the last 30 years. Even people like Roy Spencer and Lucia are “warmers”.
A more reasonable position is that there has been some warming but that it may not pan out to the 2-5C degree increases the alarmists are predicting.
Thanks
William
Mebbe integrate all these events somehow and see what ya get.
======================================
Hypothesis by vukcevic (previously regular contributor, recently absent) proposing an electro-magnetic interaction feedback between solar wind and major magnetospheres within confines of their heliospheric configuration may, after all, have reflection on physical reality despite its ambiguity and absence of a clear transfer mechanism. Perhaps we could hear more from vukcevic on the subject.
Leif (or anyone else for that matter),
Where can I get info on total energy transferred from the Sun to the Earth broken out by component? (e.g. EM power spectrum, B-field energy, etc)
Leif,
“The vertical electric field is generated by tropical thunderstorms that are hardly influenced by what goes on at the poles.”
What is the mechanism for the tropical storm to generate that much power??
Mike Lorrey (18:33:06) :
It seems a too simple explanation to justify entangled socio-politics, then CO2 scam is a far better explanation.
You, like Nikolas Tesla, are about to ruin a big business.
Robert Wood.
Carbon dioxide doesn’t just stay in th eatmosphere. It circulates between oceans, vegetation and air. If it did stay in the atmosphere, there would be a heck of a lot more than there is now. It circulates diurnally, seasonally, annually and even further timescales. The result is that the level of c02 in the atmosphere is not greater than it was during the earlier part of the 19th century when it was reputedly cooler. Even today when c02 is *reputedly* increasing, temperatures show a significant cooling: So no: c02 doesn’t drive the climate or act as a temperature elevator. Even water vapour which is 100 times the ghg of c02 doesn’t drive the climate. Both these feedbacks are dependent on the overall climate, whether that be a cool or a warm one.
Its therefore necessary to go to 1st principles and investigate what does drive the climate. Don’t worry: There’s a lot of peer reviewed papers on th esubject.
Short NASA vid showing the entry of solar wind particles to Earths atmosphere when the solar field is north.
Leif Svalgaard (06:10:31) :
Ok, so the Earth has a strong vertical electric field. Would change in charged particles at the poles affect this field globally?
The vertical electric field is generated by tropical thunderstorms that are hardly influenced by what goes on at the poles.
An electric field at, sea level, of ~ 100v/m, across the entire planet is produced by tropical thunderstorms?
I don’t think so.
————————————————————————————————————————-
Variable magnetic fields influencing charged particle flow…
That would be Electromagnetic Induction.
There’s your “power source”.
Except there is no massive power to be turned on as the energy [kinetic, magnetic, electric, whatever] in the solar wind is absolutely negligible compared to TSI. As I type this, the solar wind delivers 25 million times less power to the Earth system than TSI. During rare geomagnetic storms, the factor drops to about a million.
savethesharks (20:55:44) :
It was January 21st and a HUGE and historic Suddent Stratospheric Warming event occurred in conjunction with the large GRB of the same date.
And on the same date, this:
Massive bowshock on magnetosphere
Coincidence?
Leif Svalgaard (23:59:39) :
tallbloke (23:43:39), “wrote:
Yes this is small in comparison to the TSI; but not so small in comparison to the vaunted 2W/metre^2 supposedly due to CO2.”
Svalgaard: “It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
Does this mean, Dr. Svalgaard, that you subscribe to Man-made Global warming?
Energy transfer from the solar wind is too small to be relevant for climate.
And the energy applied to a DC motor’s field coils is too small to affect the motor’s output. And yet the field in such a motor actually controls the motor output. Does such an idea work for climate: TBD.
“Svalgaard: “It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
Oh dear.
I suppose that means a thousandth of the size ?
M. Simon (09:29:29) :
“And the energy applied to a DC motor’s field coils is too small to affect the motor’s output. And yet the field in such a motor actually controls the motor output. Does such an idea work for climate: TBD.”
Like an “Insulated-Gate Bi-Polar Transistor” effect. The electromagnetic induction produced by the fluctuating magnetic field, acts as the “gate” on the system, controlling the “switching” and total power output. The magnetosheath as the emitter, the ionosphere as the collector. The magnetosphere as the epitaxial drift region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulated-gate_bipolar_transistor
Scaled up to a Sun/Magnetosphere/Earth system? Something to think about.
My choice for post of the week: Mike Lorrey (18:33:06)
It deserves to be commented in detail.
solrey (08:37:55) :
Ok, so the Earth has a strong vertical electric field.
The vertical electric field is the so-called ‘fair weather electric field’. this field is different from the polar cap electric field in the ionosphere.
tallbloke (08:53:02) :
It was January 21st and a HUGE and historic Suddent Stratospheric Warming event occurred in conjunction with the large GRB of the same date.
Coincidence?
My car had a flat tire on that day. coincidence?
James F. Evans (08:59:23) :
Svalgaard: “It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
Does this mean, Dr. Svalgaard, that you subscribe to Man-made Global warming?
It means that the solar wind energy in a thousand times smaller than the 2W/m2 that was mentioned. You be the judge. To me it shows that the solar wind is not the cause of ‘global warming’.
Stephen Wilde (09:43:35) :
“Svalgaard: “It is more than a thousand times smaller…”
Oh dear. I suppose that means a thousandth of the size ?
It means that the solar wind energy in a thousand times smaller than the 2W/m2 that was mentioned. Why the ‘Oh dear’?
kuhnkat (07:20:08) :
What is the mechanism for the tropical storm to generate that much power??
http://dev.space.fmi.fi/~makelaa/fairw.html
tallbloke (05:08:11) :
As Tenuc alludes to above, the relatively small wattage changes in solar wind
which is less than 0.001 W/m2. Mighty small thorn.
It could be that Jupiter’s effect on the heliospheric current sheet and interplanetary magnetic field turn out to be more important than the Jupiter shine on sun or earth.
You brought up the Jupiter shine. Anyway, electromagnetic effects from Jupiter cannot propagate upstream in the solar wind, because the solar wind is a conductor moving away from the sun at 11 times the Alfven speed that determines the speed with which magnetic effects can propagate in a plasma.
edt (07:12:58) :
Where can I get info on total energy transferred from the Sun to the Earth broken out by component? (e.g. EM power spectrum, B-field energy, etc)
An old calculation [which is still good] can be found here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf
Leif Svalgaard (11:25:58) :
tallbloke (08:53:02) :
Savethesharks:
It was January 21st and a HUGE and historic Suddent Stratospheric Warming event occurred in conjunction with the large GRB of the same date.
And on the same date, this:
Massive bowshock on magnetosphere
Coincidence?
My car had a flat tire on that day. coincidence?
Dunno Leif, were you driving in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt at the time?
Just apply the “Right Hand Rule” (RHR). Determine the direction of H+ or the direction of e-, apply the RHR and you’ll get the direction of the magnetic Field. Don’t forget that v (velocity of the particle) and B (magnetic force per moving charge) are perpendicularly to F (Magnetic Field).
In the bow shock of the solar system, some nucleons can penetrate –crosscurrent- the solar wind and they increase the load of energy that they transport. When the magnetic field of giant planets doesn’t deflect them, they would travel obliquely (θ 90 °) to the plane of the terrestrial magnetic field, so few would be diverted towards the outer limits of the solar system.
Contrarily to what we could think, the speedy nucleons (v > 400 Km/s) with a low energy density (E 10^9 eV) penetrate the barrier and travel countercurrent with respect to the trajectory of the solar wind, i.e. straightly to the Sun.
We could think that the amount of energy of anomalous cosmic rays is quite low as to be considered on the Earth’s climate; nevertheless, we have to consider that it is not a lonely intergalactic wave which strikes against the Earth’s magnetic field, but trillions of particles which interact with the upper atmosphere of the Earth. Perhaps, I could evade a ball thrown against me, but it would be very-unlikely that I could evade a billion balls thrown against me. Similarly, the damage that I could receive from a single hit would be much lower than the damage that a billion hits could cause to me. This is called Nahle’s rule.
🙂
tallbloke (12:33:40) :
“My car had a flat tire on that day. coincidence?”
dunno Leif, were you driving in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt at the time?
I have steel-belted radials, so should have been Ok, but more to the point, geomagnetic activity and solar wind data were not unusual at that time: http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2009%2C1%2C20 so nothing happened in the magnetosphere at that time.
Lief,
Thankyou for putting this research into perspective.
All to often quantitative perspective is lost on many.
I noticed right away that the original article provided no quantitative information, and certainly made no attempt to compare the energy transfer involved with known amounts of energy transmitted by standard means. Your analysis that this is miniscule compared to other transfers of energy is important, no vital for people to keep in mind.
As an engineer, I have to put things into perspective. Being excited about an amount of energy 3 or more orders of magnitude smaller than the total energy transfer is just silly.
PS. Thanks for updating your solar cycle transition web page earlier this week:
http://www.leif.org/research/Most%20Recent%20IMF,%20SW,%20and%20Solar%20Data.pdf
I enjoy your analyses there and in these blogs.
Gary, aka NucEngineer
Haha… I forgot to include the next data which is important for understanding how the Interstellar Cosmic Rays penetrate the solar system magnetic barrier:
These data is for Solar Wind:
Velocity: Fast wind = 500-800 km/s. Slow wind = 250-400 km/s
Density: Fast wind = 3×10^6 m^-3. Slow wind = 10×10^6 m^-3
Proton flux temperature: Fast wind = 2×10^5 K. Slow wind = 4×10^4 K
Electron flux temperature: Fast wind = 1.2×10^5 K. Slow wind = 1.5×10^5 K
Magnetic field: Fast wind = 2^-10 nT. Slow wind = 2^-10 nT
Sources:
http://tmo.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report2/42-50/50R.PDF
http://www.ips.gov.au/Solar
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/03/030321075236.htm (very important you read this one).
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ace/
Nasif Nahle (12:50:04) :
In the bow shock of the solar system, some nucleons can penetrate –crosscurrent- the solar wind and they increase the load of energy that they transport. When the magnetic field of giant planets doesn’t deflect them, they would travel obliquely (θ 90 °) to the plane of the terrestrial magnetic field, so few would be diverted towards the outer limits of the solar system.
I don’t know what you are trying to say, but I have rarely seen anything this muddled. The anomalous cosmic rays are simply ordinary neutral atoms that have exchanged an electron with solar wind protons lingering near the termination shock and can now be accelerated, but generally to much lower energies than the ‘regular’ galactic cosmic rays. Their energy density is so low that they have even less effect than the ‘regular’ solar wind. Please, how about some perspective here.
Leif Svalgaard (14:40:13)
Paps 2006
The population of energetic particles in the heliosphere is modulated by the solar activity. At the solar minimum, the main sources of the energetic particles observed at 1 AU are:
1. The interstellar medium in the form of galactic cosmic rays observed at energies above 200 MeV for protons and above 3 MeV for electrons
2. The termination shock in the form of anomalous cosmic rays
3. The corotating interaction regions which accelerate electrons up to around 300 keV and ions up to a few MeV/nucleon; and
4. the Jovian magnetosphere that generates electrons observed at 1AU during quiet times in the range from a few hundreds keV to a few MeV.
Rusch, D. W., Gerard, J.-C., Solomon, S., Crutzen, P. J., and Reid,
G. C.: The effect of particle precipitation events on the neutral
and ion chemistry of the middle atmosphere-I. Odd nitrogen,
Planet. Space Sci., 29, 767–774,1981
William (06:38:43) :
1) I am thinking if the atmorsphere doesn’t store heat, then all of the discussion regarding climate change is irrelevant. But of course the notion that the atmosphere doesn’t store (contain) heat is an afront to science anyway. All matter stores some amount of heat energy, the atmosphere is made up of matter, therefore it stores some amount of heat. I do agree that the oceans store significantly more heat than the air; much denser matter.
2) I’m not sure I exactly understand what they’re looking at here. I thought the main issue with the diminished solar wind is that it allows cosmic radiation into the atmosphere, increasing the propensity for cloud formation, thus increased albedo. This somehow relates to the creation of aerosols which become the nuclei for water vapor condensation. I could be slightly off on my understanding though.
This article is about a different method of energy transference though; relating to the energy transfer between the the solar wind and the earth’s magnetosphere, and the relationship of the interplanetary magnetic field to that energy transference.
Leif
What do you think is the likelihood of another Carrington event of 1859 occurring, and if one did happen would that have a dramatic impact on our modern-electronically dependent- world?
Tonyb
Leif Svalgaard (14:40:13) :
I don’t know what you are trying to say, but I have rarely seen anything this muddled. The anomalous cosmic rays are simply ordinary neutral atoms that have exchanged an electron with solar wind protons lingering near the termination shock and can now be accelerated, but generally to much lower energies than the ‘regular’ galactic cosmic rays. Their energy density is so low that they have even less effect than the ‘regular’ solar wind. Please, how about some perspective here.
It is about the discovery of anomalous interstellar cosmic rays by the Voyagers at the Termination Shock. It shows how the predictions of Vidal Madjar et al on this issue were correct and it is clear signal that the solar system has penetrated into a cosmic cloud probably originated by a supernova.
Incidentally, the fluctuations of the interstellar cosmic rays coincide very closely to the variations of temperature during the period 2002-2007.
Gary Plyler (13:36:55) :
“As an engineer, I have to put things into perspective. Being excited about an amount of energy 3 or more orders of magnitude smaller than the total energy transfer is just silly.”
Comparison of the magnitude of flux A over flux b is irrelevant,the question that one asks is does the inclusion of an additional parameter(s) alter the composition , or perturb the non equilibrium steady state( in regard to symmetry breaking) and effect the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere.
eg
Modeling of JHR influence on the circulation and ozone concentration in
the middle atmosphere
Zubova, *,V., E.Rozanovb,d, A.Shirochkovc, L.Makarovac, T.Egorovab,d, A.Kiselev a,
Yu.Ozolin a, I. Karola and W. Schmutzb
Abstract
A Chemistry Climate model is used to evaluate of the possible influence of Joule heating induced by the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) elements on the ozone concentration and dynamics of the Earth atmosphere. The Joule heating rates in the stratosphere are parameterized on the base of the time series of the solar wind and IMF parameters taken from the NASA database (King,1999) for 1996. The results of the 10-year-long model run with the additional Joule source of heat are compared with the output of the unperturbed(control) 10-year-long model run. Both simulations are performed in equilibrium mode with prescribed boundary conditions and for the minimum of the 11-year solar cycle. The comparison of the model outputs shows that the simulated atmosphere is rather sensitive to the introduced Joule heating. The most significant changes were found in the lower stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The NH lower-stratospheric temperature increases by 1-3 K almost throughout the whole year with the significance level at 95% or higher. In boreal summer the changes of the ozone concentration are anti-correlated with the temperature as expected from the gas phase photochemical theory. In boreal autumn and spring the variations of the ozone mixing ratio can be affected not only by the local temperature changes but also by the redistribution of the meridional circulation in the stratosphere. In the Southern Hemisphere (SH) the additional Joule heating leads to a significant increase of the stratospheric temperature for the austral winter (~2K). The most substantial SH ozone changes (~10%) are found in the lower stratosphere during the austral spring.
tallbloke (23:33:53) :
My only reason for doubting this is that it would make Jupiter a net energy source.
I’m open to being corrected.
DaveE.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm
DaveE (18:21:48) :
tallbloke (23:33:53) :
Jupiter emits more energy than it absorbs. There are a couple of Russian papers on Jupiter’s effect on the heliospheric current sheet and IMF.
My only reason for doubting this is that it would make Jupiter a net energy source.
I’m open to being corrected.
DaveE.
Pioneer and Voyager starships confirmed this puzzle, which has been notified many years before from onground observations of the planet. Jupiter also emits a strong flux of electrons which also can cause “eddies” (turbulences) of the solar wind. So, Jupiter has its own source of energy, apparently, because it emits twice the energy it absorbs from the Sun.
James F. Evans (08:59:23) :
Svalgaard: “It is more than a thousand times smaller…[than TSI]”
Evans: “Does this mean, Dr. Svalgaard, that you subscribe to Man-made Global warming?”
Svalgaard: “It means that the solar wind energy in a thousand times smaller than the 2W/m2 that was mentioned. You be the judge. To me it shows that the solar wind is not the cause of ‘global warming’.”
I asked you, Dr. Svalgaard, a direct question.
But you dodge answering in a direct fashion.
Not what I would normally expect from a scientist.
Dr. Svalgaard, it appears you are playing both sides against the middle.
It is a precarious position for a scientist to take.
One could conclude by that kind of evasive answer, that you do, indeed, subscribe to Man-made Global warming.
But let me not be guilty of putting words in your mouth, so let me ask the direct question, again:
Do you, Dr. Svalgaard subscribe to Man-made Global warming?
tallbloke (08:53:02) :
savethesharks (20:55:44) :
It was January 21st and a HUGE and historic Suddent Stratospheric Warming event occurred in conjunction with the large GRB of the same date.
And on the same date, this:
Massive bowshock on magnetosphere
Coincidence?
Doesn’t look like a coincidence to me. Looks like a damn good correlation.
I’m not sure what Leif’s flat tire has to do with it, however.
The “flat tire” incident: Non-sequitur. Does not follow.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Alan Cheetham (11:06:07) “See the following for an examination of the influence of the earth and solar magnetic fields on global temperatures: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/EarthMagneticField.htm “
Alan, thanks very much for the clues you have assembled. I hope Scafetta is aware of your webpage (as it may give him cause to pause).
I suggest that you include Figure 15 from here:
Johnston, D.P. (2008). An alternative view of global warming.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Johnston_MagneticGW.pdf
Have you read Yu.V. Barkin? The reason I ask: I am concerned that confounding is being overlooked in assigning “causes” (for example in Johnston (2008)). [This would explain some of the belligerent resistance.]
There are simple and complex explanations for the “excess” of energy emitted by the gaseous giant:
1. Shrinking by gravitational force (feasible; however, the shrinking rate is quite small, so the feasibility is quite small).
2. Water near its core (so, so).
3. Residual energy available since its formation (feasible)
4. Chemical reactions in its interior (a bit unfeasible).
5. A source of radioactivity in its interior (a feasible possibility by QT).
Leif Svalgaard (13:19:05) : I have steel-belted radials, so should have been Ok, but more to the point, geomagnetic activity and solar wind data were not unusual at that time: http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2009%2C1%2C20 so nothing happened in the magnetosphere at that time.
Hmmm…..this was also from NICT at the very same time. Go figure.
Maybe it was just a big-ass flare.
Or perhaps it corresponded with this….maybe so…maybe not:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Magnetar_Observed_During_Outburst_Thanks_To_Rapid_Response_Of_INTEGRAL_999.html
http://news.skymania.com/2009/06/exploding-death-star-rocks-earth.html
The point is….none of this has anything to do with a flat tire.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Its an exuberant piece but I didn’t get much sense of the magnitude of any effects on climate – degree of warming, cloud making, etc.
maksimovich (14:57:34) :
4. the Jovian magnetosphere that generates electrons observed at 1AU during quiet times in the range from a few hundreds keV to a few MeV.
So what? Particles, e.g. GCRs can travel upwind. Electromagnetic effects cannot. The effect on the Earth of Jupiter emitting electrons should be even bigger than that on the Sun. As usual, one has to take into account how large [or rather how small] an energy is involved.
TonyB (15:51:36) :
What do you think is the likelihood of another Carrington event of 1859 occurring, and if one did happen would that have a dramatic impact on our modern-electronically dependent- world?
Fairly large, and disastrous.
Nasif Nahle (15:55:00) :
it is clear signal that the solar system has penetrated into a cosmic cloud probably originated by a supernova.
So what? I was once inside a supernova.
Incidentally, the fluctuations of the interstellar cosmic rays coincide very closely to the variations of temperature during the period 2002-2007.
The fluctuations of interstellar cosmic rays coincide also very closely to the variations of temperature last week.
maksimovich (16:45:14) :
the additional Joule heating leads to a significant increase of the stratospheric temperature
And to an increase of the temperature in the thermosphere by 1000 degrees. In both cases, these effects have little of nothing to do with our climate.
Nasif Nahle (19:53:25) :
Jupiter also emits a strong flux of electrons which also can cause “eddies” (turbulences) of the solar wind. So, Jupiter has its own source of energy, apparently, because it emits twice the energy it absorbs from the Sun.
‘strong’? No, not compared with the number of electrons emitted by the sun. again, lack of perspective.
James F. Evans (20:00:18):
Do you, Dr. Svalgaard subscribe to Man-made Global warming?
Of course. Doesn’t everybody? The only question is ‘how much?’ and THAT we don’t know. Or perhaps you know, or consider ‘the science settled’?
Nasif Nahle (20:18:48) :
There are simple and complex explanations for the “excess” of energy emitted by the gaseous giant
Even the Earth emits more than it receives. The only questions, again, is ‘how much?’ and what effect Jupiter shine has on the Earth [or the even less on the Sun].
savethesharks (20:29:08) :
Hmmm…..this was also from NICT at the very same time. Go figure. Maybe it was just a big-ass flare.
There were no flares either. The simulation uses real-time data, and the data providers always warn against drawing any conclusions from such as they contain spikes and glitches, tha are removed by quality control.
Leif Svalgaard (22:35:21) : “There were no flares either. The simulation uses real-time data, and the data providers always warn against drawing any conclusions from such as they contain spikes and glitches, that are removed by quality control.”
Thanks for confirming that. Must have been something else then.
There is nothing in this video that looks like a glitch.
Maybe a spike….and a big one.
If its not a flare…then what it is it?
What do you see before your eyes in this video??
Your expert opinion is appreciated.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks (23:07:30) :
There is nothing in this video that looks like a glitch.
Here are the solar wind data (density, speed, temperature) for some hours around the glitch:
2009 01 21 1900 5.2 406.2 8.74e+04
2009 01 21 2000 5.6 399.1 8.93e+04
2009 01 21 2100 5.0 400.8 8.35e+04
2009 01 21 2200 4.6 407.9 6.61e+04
2009 01 21 2300 5.5 414.9 7.79e+04
2009 01 22 0000 3.7 406.6 5.66e+04
2009 01 22 0100 4.1 408.3 6.05e+04
2009 01 22 0200 4.1 409.9 5.38e+04
2009 01 22 0300 3.9 408.6 4.91e+04
2009 01 22 0400 4.2 401.4 5.33e+04
Nothing special.
Leif Svalgaard (22:35:21):
Note: Leif’s arguments in bold characters.
Nasif Nahle (15:55:00):
it is clear signal that the solar system has penetrated into a cosmic cloud probably originated by a supernova.
So what? I was once inside a supernova.
Of course, we were once inside a supernova. But now we are not just particles collapsing gravitationally, but more complex systems which are affected by the alterations of our surroundings. In the section of conclusions, from their article, Vidal-Madjar and colleagues wrote a significant prediction:
“The presence of a nearby cloud might also affect the physical conditions inside the solar system… an encounter with a cloud might not only affect the neutrino flux released from the Sun but also have some drastic influence on the terrestrial climate in the next 10^4 years.”
Incidentally, the fluctuations of the interstellar cosmic rays coincide very closely to the variations of temperature during the period 2002-2007.
The fluctuations of interstellar cosmic rays coincide also very closely to the variations of temperature last week.
This demonstrates that the correlation ICR-Earth’s temperature is real. Nevertheless, five years represents a longer period than one week.
Nasif Nahle (19:53:25):
Jupiter also emits a strong flux of electrons which also can cause “eddies” (turbulences) of the solar wind. So, Jupiter has its own source of energy, apparently, because it emits twice the energy it absorbs from the Sun.
’strong’? No, not compared with the number of electrons emitted by the sun. Again, lack of perspective.
Everything depends on the eye of the beholder. We have not detected any other planet which emits a relative amount of energy, not in the same proportion, as Jupiter does.
Let me tell you something, Leif: I don’t think that Jupiter has an internal source of energy of the radioactive kind, although I don’t discard a very low probability. I think it is residual energy left over since its formation.
Nasif Nahle (20:18:48):
There are simple and complex explanations for the “excess” of energy emitted by the gaseous giant
Even the Earth emits more than it receives. The only questions, again, is ‘how much?’ and what effect Jupiter shine has on the Earth [or the even less on the Sun].
Yes, you are right; nonetheless, Jupiter emits twice the energy it receives from the Sun. This gives us an idea about the magnitude of the thermal phenomenon happening in Jupiter.
I am not asking about the solar wind data.
I am asking about this:
When are you going to explain what you see before your eyes on this NICT video??
What is it??
Leif Svalgaard (22:35:21) :
“4. the Jovian magnetosphere that generates electrons observed at 1AU during quiet times in the range from a few hundreds keV to a few MeV.
So what? Particles, e.g. GCRs can travel upwind. Electromagnetic effects cannot. The effect on the Earth of Jupiter emitting electrons should be even bigger than that on the Sun. As usual, one has to take into account how large [or rather how small] an energy is involved.”
I presume you meant the effect from the sun should be greater,Up to 40 MeV jovian electron are dominant population eg Pamela experiment Casolino and others
“The Jovian magnetosphere is a powerful accelerator of electrons up to several tens of MeV as observed at first by Pioneer 10 spacecraft (1973). The propagation of Jovian electrons to Earth is affected by modulation due to Corotating Interaction Regions (CIR). Their flux at Earth is, moreover, modulated because every 13 months Earth and Jupiter are aligned along the average direction of the Parker spiral of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field.”
I did not mention EM effects.nor is it suggested the Jovian electrons are causal mechanism however electron precipitation does effect the ozone and hence stratospheric temperature. eg E. Rozanov et al
We have introduced additional NOy sources caused by energetic electron precipitation (EEP) during 1987 into a Chemistry-Climate model. Comparison of two model runs with and without EEP reveals increase of reactive nitrogen by about 2 ppbv in the middle stratosphere over the tropical and middle latitudes. In the upper stratosphere over the polar winter regions the simulated NOy enhancement reaches 10 ppbv. Decreases of the ozone mixing ratio in the stratosphere by up to 5% over midlatitudes and up to 30% over southern high-latitudes are calculated. A ∼0.5 K cooling in the middle stratosphere over the tropics and up to 2 K over southern high-latitudes is calculated with detectable changes in the surface air temperatures. These results confirm that the magnitude of the atmospheric response to EEP events can potentially exceed the effects from solar UV fluxes. These mechanisms work in phase outside polar latitudes, but can compensate each other within polar latitudes.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023041.shtml
Leif Svalgaard (23:44:15) :
savethesharks (23:07:30) :
There is nothing in this video that looks like a glitch.
Here are the solar wind data (density, speed, temperature) for some hours around the glitch:
Leif, I’m absolutley willing to accept the video is just showing a glitch, but I’m interested to know what sort of event could cause a bowshock of that magnitude, and whether such a bowshock could indeed split the polar vortex in two as happened during the sudden stratospheric warming event which coincidentally occurred at the same time as the ‘bowshock'(real or not) seen in the videao.
Interesting that January 20/21st shock event, it was immediately followed by a Sudden Stratospheric Warming in the Arctic.
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/times?plot=temps&alert=1
I also see that there was a heliocentric alignment of Earth and Mercury nearly opposite to Jupiter, 10:00am 20th Jan.
savethesharks (00:16:00) :
When are you going to explain what you see before your eyes on this NICT video?? What is it??
Since it is you who brought the video into the discussion, you should know. Anyway, if the solar wind density jumped up abruptly from 5 protons/cc to, say 500, we would see something similar. Missing data is encoded as 999 and should be ignored [or interpolated using neighboring good values]. If missing data was used, then we would see something similar, namely an abrupt compression of the magnetosphere.
tallbloke (01:22:36) :
whether such a bowshock could indeed split the polar vortex in two
The polar vortex is not up there where it is influenced by the bowshock events, so I would say “no”. Occasionally, cosmic rays [e.g. from the Sun or perhaps from the GRB] generate spurious data [e.g. the streaks and snow you see on images of the corona during a solar storm], so a coincidence in timing may just be something like that. Ask NICT to run the simulation again, but with ‘scrubbed’ data, if this is deemed to important.
maksimovich (01:12:27) :
I did not mention EM effects.nor is it suggested the Jovian electrons are causal mechanism
Since what you post are often disconnected snippings without further commentary, it is hard to guess what you suggest. That you post something is you me an implicit suggestion of some sort of causal connection. I have by now forgotten why Jupiter was important in the topic, but would assume it was because somebody thought that Jupiter shining [EM or electrons] on the Sun [or the Earth] would modulate solar activity or climate [or weather?]. From energy considerations I maintain that that is highly unlikely, unless the claimant shows how it could happen.
Have you tried integrating those events yet, Leif?
=============================
Ulric Lyons (06:10:57) :
I also see that there was a heliocentric alignment of Earth and Mercury nearly opposite to Jupiter, 10:00am 20th Jan.
Assuming you mean 10 am UT, there is also an alignment with my flat tire event precisely 24 hours later [taking into account the LOD anomaly and the phase shift of the Chandler Wobble].
kim (06:27:26) :
Have you tried integrating those events yet, Leif?
Let the ones that claim such events [I can supply more timing details on my flat tire event on request] do whatever analysis they need to do.
Woo-hoo! What do I win?
Walt (08:00:18) :
I predict that in 2009 we’ll start hearing more about the interplay of the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind and related from the Sun. While the magnetic field interplay may not contribute anything to the solar forcing, we will see new models discussing atmospheric ablation and upper atmospheric heat flow due to changes in the shape of Earth’s magnetosphere. This will factor in to heat loss in polar regions during times of a quiet sun. Quantifying auroral expressions for polar warming/cooling scenarios will become almost as popular as watching for sunspots.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/30/the-worst-climate-predictions-of-2008/
Leif
I said:
“TonyB (15:51:36) :
What do you think is the likelihood of another Carrington event of 1859 occurring, and if one did happen would that have a dramatic impact on our modern-electronically dependent- world?”
You said; ‘Fairly large, and disastrous.’
Can you point me to any recent paper on the likelihood of such an event and the likely dramatic impact. As far as I can see we are taking no measures to move to Carrington proof systems, although we are monitoring what is happening.
Second question; How much notice would we receive of such an event?
thanks for your help
tonyb
Ulric Lyons (06:10:57)
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/times?plot=temps&alert=1
Interesting.
Leif Svalgaard (06:12:25) :
tallbloke (01:22:36) :
whether such a bowshock could indeed split the polar vortex in two
The polar vortex is not up there where it is influenced by the bowshock events, so I would say “no”. Occasionally, cosmic rays [e.g. from the Sun or perhaps from the GRB] generate spurious data [e.g. the streaks and snow you see on images of the corona during a solar storm], so a coincidence in timing may just be something like that. Ask NICT to run the simulation again, but with ’scrubbed’ data, if this is deemed to important.
The twisted magnetic ropes that NASA has observed migrate towards the N.Pole in N.Hemisphere winter time, and varying connections here are a likely cause of SSW`s.
This article shows a bowshock event that had profound effects at the poles:
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.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
TonyB (10:59:59) :
Can you point me to any recent paper on the likelihood of such an event and the likely dramatic impact. As far as I can see we are taking no measures to move to Carrington proof systems, although we are monitoring what is happening.
2008:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm
2009:
http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~tohban/wiki/index.php/Other_Discoveries_from_Carrington's_Flare
Ulric Lyons (11:23:27) :
This article shows a bowshock event that had profound effects at the poles:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
This has nothing to do with the bowshock, but with reconnection to southward magnetic fields. Take it from me, I’m one of the world’s leading expects on geomagnetic activity [seriously!].
TonyB (10:59:59) :
Can you point me to any recent paper on the likelihood of such an event and the likely dramatic impact. As far as I can see we are taking no measures to move to Carrington proof systems, although we are monitoring what is happening.
It is hard to quantify when the next ‘500-year flood’ will arrive, except that it will come. Some of our thoughts on this may be found here:
http://www.leif.org/research/1859%20Storm%20-%20Extreme%20Space%20Weather.pdf
I’m sure a google search will turn up much more.
Second question; How much notice would we receive of such an event?
8 minutes and 19 seconds on average. Kid you not…
leif
thanks, that is a great read.
tony b Second question; How much notice would we receive of such an event?
Leif Svalgaard; 8 minutes and 19 seconds on average. Kid you not…
tonyb GULP!
Leif Svalgaard (12:59:58) :
Ulric Lyons (11:23:27) :
This article shows a bowshock event that had profound effects at the poles:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
This has nothing to do with the bowshock, but with reconnection to southward magnetic fields. Take it from me, I’m one of the world’s leading expects on geomagnetic activity [seriously!].
June 3rd 2007 Venus conjunct Mercury (heliocentric), June 5th 2007 Jupiter conjunct Earth (heliocentric), any flat tyres then?
Ulric Lyons (13:46:54) :
June 3rd 2007 Venus conjunct Mercury (heliocentric), June 5th 2007 Jupiter conjunct Earth (heliocentric), any flat tyres then?
The planets failed to deliver. They often do, except to the true believers. I guess I didn’t believe hard enough; not that I want flat tires, but it is good to know when to stay home hiding under a rock.
TonyB (13:35:17) :
Second question; How much notice would we receive of such an event?
Leif Svalgaard; 8 minutes and 19 seconds on average.
tonyb GULP!
This is the time it takes light from the Sun to reach us. The solar wind disturbance will not arrive for another ~15 hours or so, but deadly solar energetic particles will be coming in a few minutes to hours after the event, which will take a day or so to play out.
Leif Svalgaard (06:43:35) :
Ulric Lyons (06:10:57) :
I also see that there was a heliocentric alignment of Earth and Mercury nearly opposite to Jupiter, 10:00am 20th Jan.
Assuming you mean 10 am UT, there is also an alignment with my flat tire event precisely 24 hours later [taking into account the LOD anomaly and the phase shift of the Chandler Wobble].
Suggest your perception of the Chandler Wobble was actually the flat tyre starting to come off the rim as you coasted to the side of the road.
Leif Svalgaard (13:50:05) :
Ulric Lyons (13:46:54) :
June 3rd 2007 Venus conjunct Mercury (heliocentric), June 5th 2007 Jupiter conjunct Earth (heliocentric), any flat tyres then?
“The planets failed to deliver. They often do, except to the true believers. I guess I didn’t believe hard enough; not that I want flat tires, but it is good to know when to stay home hiding under a rock.”
Not at all, the breach in Earth’s magnetic field was on the 3rd June.
Ulric Lyons (14:36:09) :
“The planets failed to deliver.
In the flat tire department, that was.
Ulric Lyons (14:36:09) :
Not at all, the breach in Earth’s magnetic field was on the 3rd June.
Actually, there was no such breach at that time:
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2007,6,3
and one would expect that to happen 4 days later than any planetary effect on the Sun, but perhaps not too relevant as there was none.
So the NASA report is wrong then?
“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.”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
There is no doubt the Sun was very active on 3rd June 2007 with three M class flares. http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/last_events_20070606_1019/index.html
Leif Svalgaard (15:16:56) :
Ulric Lyons (14:36:09) :
Not at all, the breach in Earth’s magnetic field was on the 3rd June.
Actually, there was no such breach at that time:
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2007,6,3
and one would expect that to happen 4 days later than any planetary effect on the Sun, but perhaps not too relevant as there was none.
Why would NASA say there was a breach then?
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm
Ulric Lyons (16:24:26) :
So the NASA report is wrong then?
No, just your interpretation of what they said.
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field connects with the Earth all the time [that is even the topic of this very thread!]. The significance of June 3rd is just that on that day the spacecraft were all lined up in such a way that they could observe such a connection event particularly well.
There is no doubt the Sun was very active on 3rd June 2007 with three M class flares.
Indeed it was, but it takes 4 days for the solar wind from that activity to reach the Earth.
Why would NASA say there was a breach then?
They said “the five probes serendipitously flew through the breach just as it was opening” so they were really talking about the probes just being in the right place at that time.
TonyB 10:59:59
My understanding is that the Carrington Event was the strongest such event in 5,000 years, so it may well be a once in 5,000 years, or so, event.
Leif 6:45:18
Fair enough. Any takers on integrating these events? Leif knows I wouldn’t be able to analyze the data unless maybe my life depended upon it. Does this valve run the spigot?
======================================
I’m really tiptoeing over the edge here, but if these events are somehow caused by the tiny tidal shifts caused by the motion around the barycenter, then the correlation with the movements of the planets might be explained.
Is that a hippogryph over there?
==============================================
Nasif Nahle (19:53:25) : 11.09
Thanks Nasif. I wasn’t aware of that.
DaveE.
kim (18:39:20) :
if these events are somehow caused by the tiny tidal shifts caused by the motion around the barycenter, then the correlation with the movements of the planets might be explained.
There are no tidal effects associated with the barycenter as it has no mass. There are extremely tiny tidal effects caused by each planet.
No Hippogryphs live in Wonderland.
THEY say it’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.
Me, it’s the THEY I worry about.
Kindest Regards
Now, c’mon, Leif, sure a theoretical point in space has no mass, but the barycenter represents the center of mass of the solar system. I think you are starting to quibble, here. And yes, the tidal effects are tiny; so are the flares in comparison to the mass of the sun.
================================================
savethesharks (00:16:00) :
I am not asking about the solar wind data.
I am asking about this:
The source of this animation from a simulator programme using wind and field data is the last 1 second of this:
http://www3.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/realtime/movie/2009/test_6.20090121.avi
NOTE it is a simulation.
About Real-Time Magnetosphere Simulation
The real-time magnetosphere simulation is carried out using the MHD code developed by Prof. Tanaka. Input parameters are taken from the real-time solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field data observed routinely by the ACE satellite. Simulation results are visualized in real time. Note all of the plots here are based on the preliminary data (ACE Real Time Data), which have not been processed yet. (Press right panel to get the explanation of real-time magnetosphere simulation results (LatestImage))
It’s all down to planet X:
http://www.zetatalk.com/newsletr/issue134.htm
or it could be:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Gamma_ray_Flare_Star_999.html
http://grblog.org/grblog.php?cite=GCN8833
PS:
Thanks for this, Bill. The hard question that needs to be asked here: What caused the SSW of this time period?
And why did the geopotential height anomaly chart continue to reflect positive deviations above normal for many weeks afterword?
We don’t know what cause SSW events. I would hope this one is being studied.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
kim (21:00:13) :
Now, c’mon, Leif, sure a theoretical point in space has no mass, but the barycenter represents the center of mass of the solar system.
Consider the system consisting of two people walking down a street on opposite sides of the street. Their barycenter in in the middle of the street. If I bump into any of the two, there is some physical effect, but not if I bump into their barycenter.
All the bodies in the solar system are in gravitational free fall and therefore do not feel any forces. The tidal forces come about because the gravitational field is not constant across a body. Whether the tides have any effect on a body depends on the size of the tide compared to the displacements of parts of the body that take place for reasons other than tides. The typical displacements on the Sun are random movements of 0.5 km per second compared to the largest tide of 0.5 mm per 13 days or 0.5 mm / (13*86400) second = 0.5 mm / 1,000,000 second or 0.000,000,5 mm/sec compared to the 500,000 mm/sec of the typical movements, a factor of a trillion. It is all a question of size. There are planets around other stars that are so close to their star that there tidal effects create huge star-spots [which we have actually observed], so it is not about if the tides have effect [they do], but about how small that effect is, compared to ordinarily goes on.
Leif Svalgaard (17:04:17) :
“Indeed it was, but it takes 4 days for the solar wind from that activity to reach the Earth.”
What about x-ray bursts, how do they affect the magnetosphere?
Leif, 1:19:43
Uh huh, and are these tidal forces similar in relative magnitude as the flares are to the mass of the sun?
======================================
Ulric Lyons (04:19:56) :
What about x-ray bursts, how do they affect the magnetosphere?
Gamma rays, X-rays, UV, sunlight, radio waves, etc do not affect the magnetosphere or bow shock directly. They do affect the ionosphere, which in turn does couple a little to the magnetosphere, but those effects are tiny and second order and would not be visible on the scale of the simulation in the video.
Gary Plyler (13:36:55) :
“Being excited about an amount of energy 3 or more orders of magnitude smaller than the total energy transfer is just silly.”
As is wanting to destroy the world’s economy over a few PPM 🙂
kim (07:23:02) :
Uh huh, and are these tidal forces similar in relative magnitude as the flares are to the mass of the sun?
different units are hard to compare. force, flares [energy], mass…
But it doesn’t matter how big the Sun is. A flare is a local phenomenon and the energy expended comes from kinetic energy of moving solar plasma that has been ‘wound up’ and stored as magnetic energy in a twisted magnetic field. So one can compare the kinetic energies; which is what I did [kinetic energy goes with the square of the speed – care to square a trillion…] in my last post.
Leif 9:33:45
Thanks; you persist as the voice of reason. I can’t help but compare this business to a Van de Graaf generator, where very little impetus can grossly change the location of the manifestation of electrical energy.
=======================================
Leif Svalgaard (01:19:43) :
All the bodies in the solar system are in gravitational free fall and therefore do not feel any forces.
This is the theoretical situation in a simplified and idealised solar system. Observations and discovered correlations indicate otherwise. The mechanism has not yet been elucidated, so Leif is entitled to his point of view. I merely wish to alert WUWt readers to the fact that there are those who disagree with it and are actively researching this area.
Rather than seeking the explanatory mechanism in traditional Newtonian mechanics, I think a promising area of research is to study the harmonics of the motions of orbiting bodies. One of the moons of Jupiter is sufficiently heated by the effects of it’s harmonic orbital relationships with the other major moons of the Jovian system for it to have active volcanos on it’s surface.
Scientists were “surprised” to discover this.
kim (10:07:22) :
I can’t help but compare this business to a Van de Graaf generator, where very little impetus can grossly change the location of the manifestation of electrical energy.
It takes energy to run the generator. I’ll bet you put more energy in that what you get out as ‘electrical energy’. Same thing with flares, it takes a lot of energy to create the conditions that flare.
tallbloke (10:21:42) :
“All the bodies in the solar system are in gravitational free fall and therefore do not feel any forces.”
This is the theoretical situation in a simplified and idealised solar system.
Newton’s and Einstein’s laws of gravity are valid for any system, simple or not.
Observations
show with great precision that the known laws are valid
discovered correlations indicate otherwise.
Correlations are what they are. Some are good [as geomagnetic activity depending on the Sun] which means that one have to accept them it even if no mechanism was known, and some are bad [like the ones you claim] which means that they cannot be taken as credible evidence for anything [expect gullibility].
I merely wish to alert WUWt readers to the fact that there are those who disagree with it
I’m sure that most are aware of this. Disagreements are all over the place [AGW anyone?] and do not in themselves lend credence to anything.
Rather than seeking the explanatory mechanism in traditional Newtonian mechanics, I think a promising area of research is to study the harmonics of the motions of orbiting bodies. One of the moons of Jupiter is sufficiently heated by the effects of it’s harmonic orbital relationships with the other major moons of the Jovian system for it to have active volcanos on it’s surface.
The heating of Io falls wholly within Newtonian mechanics, and BTW, Io is not heated by the harmonics, but by straightforward tidal kneading by Jupiter. The other moons just serve to place io is harms way. Tidal action is all over the Universe where distances are small enough and masses large enough. There are even massive planets in close orbits about their star that produce huge star-spots [which we have observed]. In the solar system the distances are too large for tidal forces by the planets on the sun. [see my comments to kim].
Leif Svalgaard (14:06:29) :
Correlations are what they are. Some are good [as geomagnetic activity depending on the Sun] which means that one have to accept them it even if no mechanism was known, and some are bad [like the ones you claim] which means that they cannot be taken as credible evidence for anything [expect gullibility].
You’ll come out to your car and find all your tires flat one day.
If I’m in the vicinity, it’ll be purely coincidental 😉
tallbloke (15:25:27) :
You’ll come out to your car and find all your tires flat one day.
If I’m in the vicinity, it’ll be purely coincidental 😉
I’ll consult the planetary positions [and the horoscope column – just to be sure] before venturing out. Can’t be too sure these days, better wear both belt and suspenders [perhaps even a tin-hat], methinks.
Leif Svalgaard (14:06:29) :
The heating of Io falls wholly within Newtonian mechanics, and BTW, Io is not heated by the harmonics, but by straightforward tidal kneading by Jupiter. The other moons just serve to place io is harms way.
Your oversimplistic analysis is incorrect.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/jupiters-tidal-squeeze-drives-extreme-volcanism-on-io.ars
It is the harmonics which currently modulate the eccentricity of Io’s orbit in a Laplace resonance, and this maximises the degree of the tidal heating caused by Jupiter. But this will change over time and so the temperature of Io will wax and wane over a long period.
I hear what you are saying about distances and masses. Do you hear what I’m saying about harmonics of many bodied situations making a difference to the energy interactions over long timescales?
tallbloke (16:55:18) :
“The other moons just serve to place io in harms way.”
Your oversimplistic analysis is incorrect.
Nonsense. The heating is done by tidal forces. As I said, the other moons and their ‘harmonics’ just serve to bring Io into such places where the heating is large.
Do you hear what I’m saying about harmonics of many bodied situations making a difference to the energy interactions over long timescales?
This is relevant in the Jovian system, but not to planets influencing the Sun. If we try to make an analogy, then it would be how the Sun’s tides on Jupiter might be helped by the 2:5 resonance with Saturn, not the other way around. And for this case the distances are too large for the tides to be effective anyway.
Leif Svalgaard (20:19:46) :
This is relevant in the Jovian system, but not to planets influencing the Sun. If we try to make an analogy, then it would be how the Sun’s tides on Jupiter might be helped by the 2:5 resonance with Saturn, not the other way around. And for this case the distances are too large for the tides to be effective anyway.
I don’t have any problem agreeing to disagree over this. I agree the tidal effects are small, but they are non zero, and I have seen how forces which weren’t considered large enough by science to have significant effects can be amplified by resonances.
This is why I’m not as ready to dismiss the possibilities as you are.
There will have been periods in the past when resonances in the inner solar system including those with our moon would have had bigger effects than we currently see. Ian Wilson has been doing some great work in this area, and his paper will elucidate some of those. It has been accepted for publication already.
The suns outer layers are a highly mobile plasma of very hot matter and energy. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the motion of this plasma will be affected by the motion of the surrounding planets. You pointed out that big planets close to other stars produce big spots on the stars. So why not smaller planets further out producing little spots on the sun? It all a matter of degree, and tidal action may not be the only effect. We have rehearsed those arguments and don’t need to go into them here and now.
The various barycentres between the planets and sun will have Lagrangian points associated with them, sometimes well inside the sun, sometimes near or even outside the surface. A priori, at these zero G points, relatively small energies can have relatively large effects. Please do comment on that idea.
In summary, you say the planets are too far out and too small to have an effect. I say we don’t know enough about the solar system with it’s never ending succession of scientific ‘surprises’ to be certain. I like it that way, becuase I like the possibility that there is more to be discovered. You seem to like certainty, and claim the sufficiency of known physics, but the Leighton Babcock dynamo theory is being spun onto it’s head at the moment, and the field is open as far as I can see.
Warmest regards to you as always.
tallbloke (01:19:21) :
The suns outer layers are a highly mobile plasma of very hot matter and energy. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the motion of this plasma will be affected by the motion of the surrounding planets
It most certainly is, it is just that the additional motions are so very tiny [trillionths] compared to the roiling messiness that goes on all the times.
>i>The various barycentres between the planets and sun will have Lagrangian points associated with them
No, there are no such points. The Lagrangian points are between the masses and not the barycenters, and are all very far from the Sun
In summary, you say the planets are too far out and too small to have an effect. I say we don’t know enough about the solar system with it’s never ending succession of scientific ’surprises’ to be certain.
We do know about tides and gravitational interactions. We use that knowledge to calculate highly accurate tide tables and interplanetary spacecraft orbits that take our craft to where we want them to go.
I like it that way, becuase I like the possibility that there is more to be discovered.
There are so much to be discovered, but most often, each discovery adds to our knowledge and builds on what we already know.
You seem to like certainty, and claim the sufficiency of known physics
You have that wrong in one sense and correct in another. The known physics is the result of untold many experiments and observations. The certainty comes from the agreement with those, and the uncertainty comes from the fact that the more we know, the deeper we can probe and when we do, we make new discoveries.
but the Leighton Babcock dynamo theory is being spun onto it’s head at the moment
This is a statement of ignorance fueling by wishful thinking. What is going on today is that we are being able to probe the details of the theory as never before. An apt analogy is trying to deduce the position of a planet. The observations show that the planet is not exactly where it should be. By further observations we discover another planet that tugs on the first, causing the discrepancy. There was nothing wrong with the theory, but there were unknown details [the extra planet]. Discovering and resolving the extra details in the end, end up strenghtening the theory.
As far as B-L theory is concerned, we are learning that the role of the meridional circulation [while important] is probably less than assumed in the models, or that the internal half of the circulation [which was assumed to be a mirror of the external one] may have unknown structure to it. All of these ‘problems’ are good as they teach us something we would not otherwise be able to interpret without the conceptual framework of B-L [or any other model we might entertain]. You see, without a detailed model we can’t learn anything. Physics has always progressed by fitting observations into a Standard Model, and physicists are loath to accept a new Standard Model, until the new model [in addition to explaining everything the old one did] has shown its value by explaining a large body of observations that the old one did not. There is no such detailed alternative model to the B-L theory, so the question of replacing B-L doesn’t even come up.
Leif Svalgaard (07:18:30) :
One more time [perhaps a nice moderator would delete the previous post…]
tallbloke (01:19:21) :
The suns outer layers are a highly mobile plasma of very hot matter and energy. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the motion of this plasma will be affected by the motion of the surrounding planets
It most certainly is, it is just that the additional motions are so very tiny [trillionths] compared to the roiling messiness that goes on all the times.
The various barycentres between the planets and sun will have Lagrangian points associated with them
No, there are no such points. The Lagrangian points are between the masses and not the barycenters, and are all very far from the Sun
In summary, you say the planets are too far out and too small to have an effect. I say we don’t know enough about the solar system with it’s never ending succession of scientific ’surprises’ to be certain.
We do know about tides and gravitational interactions. We use that knowledge to calculate highly accurate tide tables and interplanetary spacecraft orbits that take our craft to where we want them to go.
I like it that way, becuase I like the possibility that there is more to be discovered.
There is so much to be discovered, but most often, each discovery adds to our knowledge and builds on what we already know.
You seem to like certainty, and claim the sufficiency of known physics
You have that wrong in one sense and correct in another. The known physics is the result of untold many experiments and observations. The certainty comes from the agreement with those, and the uncertainty comes from the fact that the more we know, the deeper we can probe and when we do, we make new discoveries.
but the Leighton Babcock dynamo theory is being spun onto it’s head at the moment
That is a statement of ignorance fueling by wishful thinking. What is going on today is that we are being able to probe the details of the theory as never before. An apt analogy is trying to deduce the position of a planet. The observations show that the planet is not exactly where it should be. By further observations we discover another planet that tugs on the first, causing the discrepancy. There was nothing wrong with the theory, but there were unknown details [the extra planet]. Discovering and resolving the extra details, in the end end up strenghtening the theory.
As far as B-L theory is concerned, we are learning that the role of the meridional circulation [while important] is probably less than assumed in the models, or that the internal half of the circulation [which was assumed to be a mirror of the external one] may have unknown structure to it. All of these ‘problems’ are good as they teach us something we would not otherwise be able to interpret without the conceptual framework of B-L [or any other model we might entertain]. You see, without a detailed model we can’t learn anything. Physics has always progressed by fitting observations into a Standard Model, and physicists are loath to accept a new Standard Model, until the new model [in addition to explaining everything the old one did] has shown its value by explaining a large body of observations that the old one did not. There is no such detailed alternative model to the B-L theory, so the question of replacing B-L doesn’t even come up.
Leif 14:06:29
Yes, I understand about the energy, but think how small a force is required to redirect almost constantly all that energy to seemingly random spots on the inner surface of the sphere. Are these forces of redirection in the van de Graaf analogous to the tidal forces within the sun?
===============================
tallbloke 1:19:21
Yes, the correlation is there and the possibility; Leif, correctly, insists on proof.
===========================
kim (07:24:24) :
Are these forces of redirection in the van de Graaf analogous to the tidal forces within the sun?
The elctromagnetic forces are 10^40 times stronger than the gravitational tidal forces, and the process is completely different. The Van de Graaf generator relies on parts of it being an insulator to prevent the charges from going anywhere until they become so strong that they can ionize the air and discharge. There are no insulators on or in the Sun.
kim (07:26:30) :
Yes, the correlation is there and the possibility; Leif, correctly, insists on proof.
Before that, even, I insist that the correlation is too weak to warrant further investigation. There are zillions of weak, marginal, spurious, and coincidental correlations, and physicists usually won’t bother with any of those, so show a good one [not just declaim that there is one – show it, provide the data, etc, so one can analyse the correlation with all the modern tools one has, computers, etc]. I have issued that challenge several times: find the very best one in your opinion, and we’ll all look at it and analyse it together. Until then, ‘shut up’ 🙂
I think Leif actually is insisting (correctly) on observational evidence, not “proof”. This is science, not mathematics. Mathematics is the tool, not the progenitor, of physics ideas.
Okay, here is a very interesting weather/electricity synthesis from the Forum (blogs) at the Thunderbolts web site: http://charles-chandler.org/Geophysics/Tornadoes%20Full.php
Regarding how far one wavelength or another of electromagnetic (EM) penetrates the atmosphere, the ground, the ocean isn’t the point – the attenuation rate at which the energy is absorbed is moot since the absorption process itself changes the incident energy to heat. Note that incident energy may be partially reflected (albedo, in both the tiny window of optical wavelengths as well as the rest of the EM spectrum up and down. Raising the temperature (kinetic temperature, specifically; molecular motion) increases the infrared signature of the planet, i.e, re-radiates a part of the energy uptake back into space, as well as into all the surrounding local medium. If you look at our planetary temperature in degrees Kelvin over a fairly long period of time, (“deep time” – hundreds of millions of years) I posit that it is close to flat, which means that, overall, energy in = energy out. This implies, in the EU idea of things, that the sun has remained reasonably constant over this period, despite changes to sunspot counts, CME’s etc. Why? The large Birkeland current in which it/we reside has maintained a fairly steady value over time, despite the typical oscillations normal with lasma phenomena (A. Peratt, Los Alamos, Physics of the Plasma Universe, 1992). No one I have read so far ‘fesses up to knowing for how long this has been going on nor how long it is likely to continue, nor what mechanism drives these large currents across space, down the galactic arms, and between galaxies and the filamentary galaxy clusters and superclusters. Keep working on really understanding how it all works, though! illegitamus non carborundum.
jjohnson (09:52:57) :
Okay, here is a very interesting weather/electricity synthesis from the Forum (blogs) at the Thunderbolts web site
I do not subscribe to the idea of giant currents criss-crossing galactic space. Current have to be continuously ‘driven’ or ‘created’ as the very fact that they flow will discharge them. In the rest-frame of the plasma [that is moving with the plasma] there is no electric field and hence no currents. We have gone over this many times, and I don’t feel like doing it again.
Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science but a fanatical creed, and their defenders equal those Holy Inquisition dominican priests.
Nogw (12:47:07) :
Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science but a fanatical creed, and their defenders equal those Holy Inquisition dominican priests.
In physics they are requirements that any idea must meet to be called a ‘theory’ and the Electric/Plasma/Thunderbolt ruminations do not qualify.
Nogw (12:47:07) :
Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science
OK, there is a ‘theory’: the climate is controlled by little green men that are changing the Earth to fit their requirements. The is lots of experimental facts for this: People have been aboard their spaceships several times. There are serious websites that can provide more support: e.g. http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2009/01/23/03050.html
Self similarity of plasma networking in a broad range of length scales: From laboratory to cosmic plasmas.
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloadsCosmo/KukushkinKartinovCos.pdf
Anchoring magnetic field in turbulent molecular clouds.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1549v1
There is also the research finding ultra-cold plasmas mimic the behavior of ultra-hot plasmas.
In this article we’re discussing, an electromagnetic induction “trigger” appears to have been detected.
Everywhere we look in the cosmos we detect charged particles in motion (a.k.a. electric current), magnetic fields, fractal filamentary structure, and saturated in EM radiation of all wavelengths.
More and more, the data seems to suggest we live in the midst of a cosmic electric storm. 😉
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…” ~Isaac Asimov
Leif Svalgaard (13:34:22) :
Nogw (12:47:07) :
Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science
OK, there is a ‘theory’: the climate is controlled by little green men that are changing the Earth to fit their requirements. The is lots of experimental facts for this: People have been aboard their spaceships several times. There are serious websites that can provide more support: e.g. http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2009/01/23/03050.html
I haven’t yet seen you give your reasons for dismissing Ching Cheh Hung’s successful predictions of solar flares coinciding with planetary positions, or his correlations between planetary motions and sunspot numbers.
I have seen plenty of this sort of ridicule from you though.
tallbloke (23:41:43) :
I haven’t yet seen you give your reasons for dismissing Ching Cheh Hung’s successful predictions of solar flares coinciding with planetary positions
Because those were not predictions at all. A prediction is about future events. The main problem with his report [not a ‘paper’] is the lack of sensitivity analysis: what happens when the angular width [10 degrees] is changed? If there is effect for large flares, there should be an even larger effect for small flares [as the external force is the same]. Yet small flares were not considered. [except a note about “However, such relation could not be confirmed in many other reports. For example, for the group of more than 1000 solar flares during 1955 and 1961, the correlation between the solar flare and the heliocentric longitude of Venus and Jupiter could not be found (ref. 8).”
Apparently, the solar physics community did not take the report seriously.
Now, do you plainly reject my theory about aliens? in violation of Nogw’s admonition: Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science.
Distinguishing between predictable causation and conditional association might be helpful in this discussion. The work schedules of 2 people on opposite sides of a city may be associated (without being causative of each other). Furthermore, they may be conditionally associated – for example depending on vacation-schedules of the 2 people. For the hopelessly-inattentive investigator, the time-of-day & day-of-week might collectively constitute a lurking variable. Failure to condition on vacation-schedule could lead to erroneous conclusions, as could failure to recognize the lurking (& confounded) variable. Investigating conditional dependencies of the past should not be misinterpreted as predicting the future. One switch-flip due to an unknown lurking variable and predictions are toast. Speculation: My impression is that different participants in the discussion are making different assumptions about what other people are thinking and that this is leading to misunderstanding, as often happens. If/where conditioning is sufficiently complex, delays in recognizing paradox are not surprising. Even if complex paradoxes can be recognized qualitatively, realistic model-assumptions may result in intractable or nearly-intractable mathematics.
Paul Vaughan (14:23:32) :
My impression is that different participants in the discussion are making different assumptions about what other people are thinking and that this is leading to misunderstanding, as often happens.
Especially when some people refuse to make the effort to clear up the misunderstanding, as you well know.
Mike Lorrey (18:33:06) :
“Instead, the strength of the flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations.”
For those of us with electrical/electronics experience or training, this sets off bells and whistles. In an electromagnet inductor (such as the Earth is), “This implies that the component alternately absorbs energy from the circuit and then returns energy to the circuit. A pure reactance will not dissipate any power.”
Since the conductivity and permeability of the materials that make up the Earth electromagnetic inductor do not have zero impedance, this means there is not pure reactance, and thus the impure reactance will dissipate power transferred to it from the Sun as heat, and *CONCENTRATED AT THE POLES*, particularly the pole which absorbs most of the current.
Since ice in the Antarctic ice cap is mostly pure water ice, its impedance is high and conductivity is low. Arctic sea ice has a much higher conductivity, and thus should absorb more of the current there, and generate more heat as a result. This can explain arctic warming.
———-
Michael Gmirkin responds:
“Can you repeat that into the mic., please?” Or at least mention it to NASA RE: Enceladus’ temperature profile? *Wink*
(An Enceladus-Saturn Electrical Connection?)
http://thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/archives/mgmirkin08/081108_enceladus_saturn_elec_connection.htm
Anyway, you make a worthwhile point. 🙂 Might have to quote you on it sometime. Heh.
Best,
~Michael
Leif Svalgaard (08:12:11) :
Now, do you plainly reject my theory about aliens? in violation of Nogw’s admonition: Plain rejection of a theory or worse of experimental facts it is not science.
———-
Leif, please stop beating up the “straw men.” They don’t put up much of a fight.
If you take issue with a specific claim, refute the claim. Your “little green men” argument says nothing of value. No offense. Ridicule is not science. Enough said.
One of the typical arguments against currents in space is that of the so-called “frozen-in” magnetic field lines (whereby magnetic fields in space are said not to be generated by local electric currents [according to Maxwell] but to be “carried along” with plasma [basically treating a region of plasma as though it is a permanent magnet traveling through space]). EU scientists, such as Don Scott and Wal Thornhill take issue with the “frozen-in” nonsense. Alfvén himself recanted the notion of the “frozen-in” conditoin, realizing it was in error. Too bad astrophysicists had already seized on it to ignore electric fields and currents…
See:
(Double Layers in Astrophysics)
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19870013880_1987013880.pdf
(Real Properties of Electromagnetic Fields and Plasma in the Cosmos)
members.cox.net/dascott3/IEEE-TransPlasmaSci-Scott-Aug2007.pdf
It’s pretty easy to demonstrate that the “frozen-in” condition is false. The easiest way is to debunk the notion that plasma is an “ideal conductor.” (It’s not. Sure, it’s a VERY GOOD conductor, but not an ideal one [a lossless superconductor].) At the very least not in the low-density plasma of space (and most likely not anywhere else).
The only true superconductors (or close to them) that have been created in the lab have been achieved using cryogenic temperatures (approaching ‘absolute zero’). The more we can reduce random (thermal, collisional) motion, the better the conductivity will be. However, plasmas contain high ‘temperature’ electrons and ions. Unfortunately, the thermal motions of charge carriers in a current will still cause them to occasionally crash into one another. This dissipates a bit of the energy of the current into ‘heat.’ (Basically, that’s what resistance is for the most part, no?)
In a superconductor resistance is effectively 0. In a low-density plasma through which a DC current flows, its resistance is non-zero. This can be rather simply demonstrated by viewing the graph of voltage vs. current.
(Resistance = Voltage / Current)
R = V / I
See the voltage-current graph here:
(Low res)
glow-discharge.com/Index.html?/Discharges_1.html
glow-discharge.com/Images/GD_Regime.jpg
(High res)
picasaweb.google.com/mgmirkin/Physics#5342156626574238450
Ref: Industrial Plasma Engineering: Volume I – Principles. Institute of Physics Press, Bristol, UK ISBN 0-7503-0318-2, Section 12.5.2, Section 9.6.3.
Draw a line from the origin through any point on the graph (other than the origin). The slope (V/I) will ALWAYS be positive. That is to say, the voltage never drops to zero, ergo the resistance never drops to zero, ergo plasma is not a superconductor (an ideal conductor with 0 resistance). Any current flowing through it will encounter non-zero resistance. Any charge imbalances will NOT be instantly neutralized. Electric fields (due to charge imbalances between different regions within a quasi-neutral plasma) can and DO exist within a plasma. With such electric fields come currents. From the electric currents spring the magnetic fields observed so ubiquitously in local, interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic space. Maxwell is NOT violated by generation of magnetic fields in plasma without source currents or by currents generated without voltage drops.
It is not sufficient to say plasma is an “ideal conductor” and thus electric fields and currents can be effectively ignored. Simply not so. If magnetic fields so arise from electric currents, per Maxwell, then it becomes readily apparent that the magnetic fields observed so ubiquitously in space are pretty darned direct evidence that currents do in fact exist in space, and on extremely large scales (given the large scales of the magnetic fields involved). Your arguments to “incredulity” and “ridicule” aside. It would be rather foolhardy to simply dismiss out of hand the potential to open a somewhat new vista of inquiry simply because one’s mind has been wired closed by the existing paradigm. In any event, once such faulty premises as the “frozen-in” condition and “plasma-as-superconductor” are exposed and real-world data is examined, a new understanding must naturally replace them and any theories based upon the faulty premises must be revisited, regardless how painfully the process for those who have enmeshed themselves with theories that may be undermined by disconfirming data.
Best,
~Michael Gmirkin
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, so I’ll generally leave it at that, other than to say that wherever we’ve looked lately, we’ve found electrodynamic processes that have confounded existing models.
From the 650,000+ Amp “flux ropes” powering the Earthly auroras and hooking contiguously all the way back to the Sun, to the “electrical tornadoes in space” involved with substorms & the auroras, to the “magnetic tornadoes” @ Mercury (just guessing they’re not all that different from our Earthly auroral “electrical tornadoes,” just a quaint difference in terminology), to the electron beam and million+ Amp “flux tube” between Io and Jupiter to the electrical nature of solar sigmoids. Electrodynamics seems to be playing a pretty big role here locally. If that be so, is it really THAT big a jump to think that the magnetic fields in space wrapped around linear / helical filaments in space are indicative of large-scale currents within those structures?
Incredulity only gets you so far. Beyond that, you might just want to set incredulity aside and look at the EVIDENCE that’s all around (the ubiquitous magnetic fields observed throughou the known universe and said to be critical in star formation, the motions of galaxy clusters, nebular collapse, etc.). If magnetic fields are NOT “frozen-in” to plasma (and 99.999% of the universe’s visible constituent matter is in the plasma state), Maxwell says the only other option is that currents exist to generate the magnetic fields we’ve definitively observed, or vice versa (the magnetic fields generate currents in the plasma; either way, currents are involved).
Just something to chew on.
Best,
~Michael Gmirkin
” Maxwell says the only other option is that currents exist to generate the magnetic fields we’ve definitively observed”
Maxwell didn’t know about the London Moment, a magnetic field that appears above a spinning super-conductor, even though there is no current.
Note that the definition includes electrons in motion being “dragged” along by (lagging implies being dragged behind), the superconductive material. Therefore, that magnetic field is also the result of electric current (generated by those electrons moving to catch up with the rotation of the superconductive sphere.)
Here is some basic superconductor physics, which is why plasma in the cosmos can not be superconductive with “frozen-in” magnetic fields.
Therefore it is impossible for magnetic fields to be “frozen-in” to a “superconductive” plasma (doesn’t exist), even if plasma was a superconductor, which it is not.
True @ Solrey-
Astrophysicists who believe in the superconductivity of plasmas need to look at the *conditions required to create superconductivity* – rather than the superconduction itself! Nowhere in the universe do we have visible (not theoretical!) conditions as are required for superconductivity to arise… either thermally or with bizarre compounds of matter and high RPM’s.
More to the point – how many superconductivity experiments have attempted to create superconductivity in an atomic gas?? Not too much, eh?
No one believed in electric space, yet we discovered the Van Allen Belts, solar wind, now Birkland currents between the Earth and Sun (to wit- how much do you want to bet that there are Birkland currents between the Sun and all the other planets too then? Or are we going to do the “Earth is the center of the Universe” thing all over again?)
Scoff at ME all you want- I’m a layman and I can stand here and blather in this forum all day and not feel the slightest embarassment. At least I’m trying to LEARN.
The ones who should feel the most embarassment should be the ones whom title themselves ‘Scientists’ or even moreso ‘leading experts’ for closing their minds to new ideas because they stem from outside their particular fields. Astronomy textbooks saying “electromagnetism in plasma behaves *this* way..” when plasma experiments are just now scratching the surface of the dynamics of plasma behaviors… that’s an attitude worthy of getting shot out of the sky with AAA fire if I’ve ever seen one.
So before I start getting fired at myself about my ‘uneducated opinions’ here, I’m going to toss one thing out for target practice:
The hallmark of a good theory is it’s ability to make successful predictions.
More and more articles like the one at the top of this thread are showing me that I was right when I took a chance on reading up on this Plasma Cosmology stuff (they predicted the above correlation DECADES ago)… and by contrast, the Mainstreamers STILL haven’t managed to take a picture of a Black Hole yet, nor seen one single little piece of Dark Matter or any gravity waves with their multi-million dollar toys!!
I’m betting on the Plasma Guys. I can see the effects of electricity, and they’re interpretations make sense to me.
Strings, extra dimensions, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, black holes, strange matter, self-sustaining nuclear fusion, and all this other hypothetical TRASH that has been wasting my hard-earned tax money need to get dumped into a trashbag and buried for future archaeologists to dig up years from now and LAUGH at!
Mike H.