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.”
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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