From the University of California – Los Angeles
How did a third radiation belt appear in the Earth’s upper atmosphere?
Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in in the Earth’s upper atmosphere in 1958, space scientists have believed that these belts consisted of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions, and an outer ring of high-energy electrons.
However, in February of this year, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science the surprising discovery of a previously unknown third radiation ring. This narrow ring had briefly circled the Earth between the inner and outer rings in September 2012 and then almost completely disappeared.
How did this temporary radiation belt appear and dissipate?
In new research, the radiation belt group in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences explains the development of this third belt and its decay over a period of slightly more than four weeks. The research is available in the online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters and will be published in an upcoming print edition.
By performing a “quantitative treatment of the scattering of relativistic electrons by electromagnetic whistler-mode waves inside the dense plasmasphere,” the investigators were able to account for the “distinctively slow decay of the injected relativistic electron flux” and demonstrate why this unusual third radiation belt is observed only at energies above 2 mega-electron-volts.
Understanding the processes that control the formation and ultimate loss of such relativistic electrons is a primary science objective of the NASA Van Allen Probe Mission and has important practical applications, because the enormous amounts of radiation the Van Allen belts generate can pose a significant hazard to satellites and spacecraft, as well to astronauts performing activities outside a spacecraft.
The current research was funded by the NASA, which launched the twin Van Allen probes in the summer of 2012.
The lead author of the research is Richard Thorne, a UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, who was a co-author of the Feb. 28 research paper in Science. Co-authors of the new research include Wen Li, a graduate student who works in Thorne’s laboratory; Binbin Ni, a postdoctoral scholar who works in Thorne’s laboratory; Jacob Bortnik, a researcher with the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Daniel Baker, a professor at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and lead author of the February Science paper; and Vassilis Angelopoulos, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences.
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Effects of interaction between solar and the Earth’s magnetic fields in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and the lithosphere are poorly understood and consequently readily dismissed as a climate change factor.
From the data available it can be readily calculated that the ocean temperature oscillations and consequently climate natural variability are strongly correlated to the above mentioned interaction:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
Dismissing obvious can be either is sign of ignorance from uninformed of the deliberate obscurantism from the conversant.
typo correction
Dismissing obvious can be either sign of ignorance from uninformed or the deliberate obscurantism from the conversant.
From vukcevic on June 20, 2013 at 11:39 pm:
Vuk, this is about an extra Van Allen belt. Your link has nothing to do with this. Either you’re spamming, or you’ve mistakenly posted on the wrong thread, twice.
And now you’ve made up another “secret sauce”, take it on your word, indecipherable mysterious index, the “Geo-Solar cycle”. Oh joy.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
June 21, 2013 at 12:27 am
……..
Thank you for your comment.
It is neither spamming nor mistakenly posted. All known Van Allen belts are due to the interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field with the charged particles emanating mainly from the solar activity, and carry imprint of the sun’s magnetic field itself.
For the time being, it is not conclusively shown that geomagnetic field is not a climate factor, hence any knowledge attained from the changes in the Van Allen belts would be a positive contribution to the further understanding of interactions of the two principal magnetic fields.
As far as
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm ‘index’
is concerned, data used and the resulting correlation from the calculation are unquestionable. The paper was forwarded to Dr. Svalgaard, his objection as far as I understand it, is not to the data and actual numerical result, but that ‘interaction’ has no known physical mechanism which can be applied and transformed into the oceanic temperature oscillations.
I appreciate your choice to disagree and object; in view of the above I am inclined to think the post was above the required relevance minimum.
It’s death rays from the planet Zorg I tell you.
Just to show we know less than we thought. These radiation belts must have some control over the volume of energy transfer from sun to surface which will have an effect on climate.
Bob B. says:
June 20, 2013 at 7:19 pm
“It’s an energy field caused by the US peoples outrage about the IRS, NSA, Benghazi, etc. scandals. Sadly, this will slowly decay with no lasting effects.”
Is there an underlying assumption that these energy fields are caused ONLY by the outrage of “US peoples” and that 5¾Billion other people in the world never have any effect?
johnmarshall said on June 21, 2013 at 3:11 am:
Except the “radiation” in the belts is charged particles, and the Sun overwhelmingly sends us its energy as photons around the visible range. Electric fields alone are not known for being able to modulate visible light. If the belts had significant optical “density” to block visible light, or diffusive properties, or at least some sort of refractive properties, then they might have an effect on climate.
But as the belts have no such optical properties, which would have made for distortion and their discovery centuries earlier by astronomers, it’s pretty obvious they do not have such control over the Sun to surface energy transfer.
Unless the charged high-energy particles are capable of generating cloud coverage, a la the Svensmark mechanism perhaps, creating more clouds when more Sun activity makes the Van Allen belts more active, thus acting as a negative feedback against increased solar energy transmission rates… Now that would be interesting if true, or at least if the Sun/clouds/surface temperatures over land can be shown to have a high enough correlation to indicate a relationship.
It always goes without asking but I will: how in the wide wide world of sports does the 4.54 Billion year old earth still have such an active radiation belt?
After almost 5 Billion years this should be a dead hard rock in space instead of as it currently appears, with all the radiation long ago dissipated, no? (not to mention volcanoes, moon, magnetic field, water, spiral galaxies, dino soft tissue, et al that should be long gone.)
off topic but thought I’d mention the giant pink elephant standing on those vibrant yellow and green rings that show no signs of dissipation or entropy over 5 Billion years. nothing in that photo says ‘wound down’ to me. Somepin going on, but pay no attention to the pachyderm behind the radiation explosion…
[snip . . either off topic or sarcasm in which case you need to indicate that as many readers do not have English as their first language, thanks . . mod]
To kadaka (KD Knoebel):
This transient belt is nothing new. The Argus experiments of 1958 and the
Starfish experiment of 1962 created temporary radiation belts by exploding
nuclear weapons in space. The subsequent beta decay of the fission products
injected charged particles into a temporary Van Allen belt. Starfish was
particularly impressive in this regard, with a 1.4 Megaton weapon being
exploded 400 km up, nearly right overhead of Johnston island in the tropical
Pacific. Working from memory, the trapped particles forming the belt lasted weeks
to months. Funnily enough, they also knocked out 2 of the 5 U.S. satellites
in orbit at that time, by radiation damaging their circuits.
Obviously, one of the stronger CMEs of the past year injected these particles
into the Earth’s magnetic field structure. Do we know the L-value structure
of this transient belt?
Chris R. says:
June 21, 2013 at 10:11 am
Starfish experiment of 1962 created temporary radiation belts by exploding
nuclear weapons in space.
………….
There is a remote possibility that the starfish experiment reversed PDO
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Starfish.htm
““It was so unexpected that we thought there was something wrong with the instrument,” says Daniel Baker, a space physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.” — http://www.nature.com/news/ephemeral-third-ring-of-radiation-makes-appearance-around-earth-1.12529 = link from William Astley (June 20, 2013 at 5:30 pm)
I just laugh at what “experts”, “leaders”, and other such sneakily-industrious entrepreneur-, politician-, & “science”-types say when observation clearly illuminates their goofy conceptions & theories in a thoroughly unflattering spotlight. These are the types of doublespeakers who don’t always concern themselves with observations. In order to deal with them effectively it’s crucial to recognize this. If the day can be survived by weaseling, they always take that option. They cross bridges toward reality only when forced by inescapable immediate necessity, so it’s never sensible to let them tie you up in arguments. Wait patiently and take them on squarely & decisively each time circumstances are right.
To vukcevic:
You wrote: “There is a remote possibility that the starfish experiment reversed PDO”
My response is: whaaat? I’d say this is really far out. As I understand it,
the PDO has to do with ocean circulation in the North Pacific. While 1.4 MT
of energy is a lot of energy, the energy required to change the sign of the PDO
seems to me to be orders of magnitude higher. Your graph is suggestive.
However, it seems to show a reversal in early 1962, while Starfish was detonated
on July 9, 1962.
It’s an intriguing thought, but I would like a lot more data before I take it
seriously. Oh, the link to the report from NASA’s GSFC gives a 404 Page
Not Found error.
To ,strong>Paul Vaughan:
Watch who you’re casting aspersions about. I know Dan Baker, and he is the
last person to fit your snarky description. He is a serious scientist. One thing
you probably don’t know, in space science the data is not straightforward to
interpret. This is especially true of energetic particle experiments.
Outright ‘damage’ or a temporary ‘upset’ (the latter being more a more common occurrence)? Bipolar devices as used in that era were susceptible to Lattice displacement caused by neutrons, protons, alpha particles, heavy ions, and very high energy gamma photons. As bipolar devices are dependent on minority carriers in the base regions, decreasing device gain by causing majority and minority charge ‘carrier’ recombination (causing the loss of a transistor’s gain). Think of it as in situ ‘doping’ or ion implantation!
But, the other effect being an ‘upset’ had this effect: “ionization effects are caused by charged particles, including the ones with energy too low to cause lattice effects … are usually transient, creating glitches and soft errors, … ”
One is a ‘recoverable’ situation (the latter), the other not so much …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Fundamental_mechanisms
.
To __Jim:
No, this was permanent degradation of the circuitry from cumulative radiation
damage. I’m working from memory here. An older physicist who I worked with when
I was working on contract to NASA gave me that 2 of 5 figure.
Telstar 1 went up 1 day after the blast, and lasted for 4 months before radiation
damage took it offline. Since this was in a low Earth orbit, it could only relay
transmissions for ~25 minutes of its 2+ hour orbit. Nevertheless, AT&T (Bell Labs)
managed to send several hundred phone and television transmissions before it failed.
They managed to get a workaround going in early 1963, but that only lasted about
1 month.
If I’m remembering correctly, the other U.S. satellite that failed was one of the
Injun series (from University of Iowa, where Dr. James Van Allen was at that
time). It might have been Injun 1, which was only a partial success anyway
since it never separated from its booster. I do know that Injun 1 stopped
sending data in March, 1963.
Chris R. says:
June 21, 2013 at 12:43 pm
……….
Re: points you make
I’ve just added graph for the (what I consider to be) PDO’s natural driver
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Starfish.htm
Highly speculative for both; the11 year average will give only general indication, I think build up started earlier and 1962 may have been final straw.
Loose correlation was broken in 1960’s for the PDO to return a bit stronger and earlier than anticipated with the latent energy from the lost peak may have contributing to the 2000’s excess global warming 🙂 .
The graph was on the WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/04/mysterious-electron-stash-found-hidden-among-van-allen-belts/#comment-1239280
when the link was available, but then it diapered soon after, Rog Tallbloke may have copy of it (perhaps late 1960’s and 1970s period was an embryo of a possible ‘nuclear winter’. :).
wws says:
June 20, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Gail Combs says:
June 20, 2013 at 5:01 pm
It’s sad to see this shopworn tactic appear here.
As for the transient Van Allen belt, I reckon it’s a good thing such didn’t occur during TLI.
Steve P.,
Take heart! Gail Combs and wws were, I am pretty sure, joking. The Puppet-in-Chief’s teleprompter has a default mode which is: “George Bush [fill in the blank]”.
Janice
Chris R. (June 21, 2013 at 12:50 pm) wrote:
“[…] in space science the data is not straightforward to interpret.”
So then why call a finding “unexpected” (voluntarily exposing a closed mind &/or incorrectly biased preconception)? That’s not a wise move even if a scientist actually was legitimately surprised.
Maybe your acquaintance just made an unfortunate choice of words — something we all do at times — but still one supposed good apple (your acquaintance by your testimony) doesn’t correct a rotten barrel (all the others). If you pay attention there’s a systematic pattern of “surprise” at “unexpected” findings in science news articles. This has the effect of undermining public confidence. It leaves the impression of closed minds with incorrectly biased instinct. Even if a researcher had no instinct, they wouldn’t be “surprised” and they wouldn’t find anything “unexpected” if they at least had an open mind. What concerns me most is that “surprise” at “unexpected” findings is exactly what’s expected from people who lack ability to recognize paradox — society can’t afford to have such people in leadership roles.
My concern is general — (it’s not aimed at your friend specifically). Apologies for any misunderstanding.
Kadaka disagrees with me,
BUT solar energy is only partly visible light, all the energy has a climate effect so changing part will affect the whole.
And yes I agree with Svensmark since his theory has been vindicated in the atmosphere and laboratory. ie. it works unlike the GHE.
Just a comment about the ‘transient 3rd radiation belt.’
The image below is from the lecture video I had posted earlier.(June 20, 2013 at 7:22 pm)http://snag.gy/bqPgD.jpg
Looking like the transient 3rd belt is Solar Wind Speed dependent for the production of deadly electrons.
But things in the belt may not be always as they appear. Time of year of this transient belt is near Equinox. So may be related to LOCATION and angle perimeters.
But another relationship to the Van Allen belts, from the bottom, up may also be a competing for a role. which looks to me like a feedback role..
Next video is from Science at NASA related to “Earth Song.”
Earth Song was captured by the EMFISIS (Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science) antennae aboard the Van Allen belt probes.
Can waves produce deadly electrons in the OUTER belt??? huh
http://youtu.be/MkTL2Ug6llE
The image I referred to above got a little snaggled.
http://snag.gy/bqPgD.jpg
Lecture video
Thanks Carla