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.”
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.