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.”
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.
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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.