By Dr. Tony Phillips
99 years ago this week, people around the world woke up to some unusual headlines.
“Telegraph Service Prostrated, Comet Not to Blame” — declared the Los Angeles Times on May 15, 1921. “Electrical Disturbance is ‘Worst Ever Known’” — reported the Chicago Daily Tribune. “Sunspot credited with Rail Tie-up” — deadpanned the New York Times.
They didn’t know it at the time, but the newspapers were covering the biggest solar storm of the 20th Century. Nothing quite like it has happened since.
It began on May 12, 1921 when giant sunspot AR1842, crossing the sun during the declining phase of Solar Cycle 15, began to flare. One explosion after another hurled coronal mass ejections (CMEs) directly toward Earth. For the next 3 days, CMEs rocked Earth’s magnetic field. Scientists around the world were surprised when their magnetometers suddenly went offscale, pens in strip chart recorders pegged uselessly to the top of the paper.
Then the fires began. Around 02:00 GMT on May 15th, a telegraph exchange in Sweden burst into flames. About an hour later, the same thing happened across the Atlantic in the village of Brewster, New York. Flames engulfed the switch-board at the Brewster station of the Central New England Railroad and quickly spread to destroy the whole building. That fire, along with another one about the same time in a railroad control tower near New York City’s Grand Central Station, is why the event is sometimes referred to as the “New York Railroad Superstorm.”
What caused the fires? Electrical currents induced by geomagnetic activity surged through telephone and telegraph lines, heating them to the point of combustion. Strong currents disrupted telegraph systems in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK and USA. The Ottawa Journal reported that many long-distance telephone lines in New Brunswick were burned out by the storm. On some telegraph lines in the USA voltages spiked as high as 1000 V.
Above: Sunspot AR1842 on May 13, 1921. [more]
During the storm’s peak on May 15th, southern cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta felt like Fairbanks, with Northern Lights dancing overhead while telegraph lines crackled with geomagnetic currents. Auroras were seen in the USA as far south as Texas while, in the Pacific, red auroras were sighted from Samoa and Tonga and ships at sea crossing the equator.
What would happen if such a storm occurred today?
Researchers have long grappled with that question–most recently in a pair of in-depth papers published in the journal Space Weather: “The Great Storm of May 1921: An Exemplar of a Dangerous Space Weather Event” by Mike Hapgood (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK) and “Intensity and Impact of the New York Railroad Superstorm of May 1921” by Jeffrey Love (US Geological Survey) and colleagues.
The summary, above, is largely a result of Hapgood’s work. He painstakingly searched historical records including scientific journals, newspaper clippings, and other reports to create a moment-by-moment timeline of the storm. Such timelines are invaluable to emergency planners, who can use them to prepare for future storms.
Above: Aurora sightings in May 1921. The leftmost red circle marks Apia, Samoa.
Jeffrey Love and colleagues also looked into the past and–jackpot!–they found some old magnetic chart recordings that did not go offscale when the May 1921 CMEs hit. Using the data, they calculated “Dst” (disturbance storm time index), a measure of geomagnetic activity favored by many space weather researchers.
“The storm attained an estimated maximum −Dst on 15 May of 907 ± 132 nT, an intensity comparable to that of the Carrington Event of 1859,” they wrote in their paper.
This dry-sounding result upends conventional wisdom. Students of space weather have long been taught that the Carrington Event (-Dst = 900 nT) was the strongest solar storm in recorded history. Now we know that the May 1921 storm was about equally intense.
If the May 1921 storm hit today, “I’d expect it to lead to most, if not all, of the impacts outlined in the 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering report led by Paul Cannon,” says Hapgood. “This could include regional power outages, profound changes to satellite orbits, and loss of radio-based technologies such as GPS. The disruption of GPS could significantly impact logistics and emergency services.”
It’s something to think about on the 99th anniversary of a 100-year storm….
An expanded and sharable version of this story is available here.
Addendum by Anthony:
In a story by the New York Post titled: “The sun has entered a ‘lockdown’ period, which could cause freezing weather, famine” Dr. Phillips says:
Experts believe we are about to enter the deepest period of sunshine “recession” ever recorded as sunspots have virtually disappeared.
Astronomer Dr. Tony Phillips said:
“Solar Minimum is underway and it’s a deep one.”
“Sunspot counts suggest it is one of the deepest of the past century. The sun’s magnetic field has become weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system.”
“Excess cosmic rays pose a health hazard to astronauts and polar air travelers, affect the electro-chemistry of Earth’s upper atmosphere and may help trigger lightning.”
I’d like to point out the headline “The sun has entered a ‘lockdown’ period, which could cause freezing weather, famine“
That headline is an NY Post extrapolation of low sunspot numbers. The scientist, Phillips, didn’t say that.
The cold Maunder Minimum, where this claim originates, was also accompanied by huge amounts of high altitude aerosols from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815. It is likely the cause of the “year without a summer” not the lack of sunspots.
We must be true to the science, even if it does not support the claims we
think are true. However, the [increased] number of cosmic rays will be a good test of Svensmark’s theory that the sun’s magnetic field modulates galactic cosmic rays, and more cosmic rays create more atmospheric clod seeds in Earths atmosphere, thus increasing cloud cover and cooling the planet.
Of course with adjustments de jour being the current mission of climate scientists that are the gatekeepers of the surface data, we may never know for sure.
“However, the decreased number of cosmic rays will be a good test of Svensmark’s theory …”
Isn’t it “increased number of cosmic rays” ?
Indeed it is!
Yes, you are right.
And Svensmark’s theory has already been shown not to work: The past several cycles have had increasing cosmic rays which should have led to cooling, but warming has been observed instead.
One way to ‘save’ the idea is to claim that the data has been manipulated. This will be increasingly be the view of defenders of the ‘theory’. Just watch this space.
Here is more on extreme events:
https://leif.org/research/Report-on-Extreme-Space-Weather-Events-2014.pdf
Tehre are too many variables at stake to falsify or confirm the theory with just a parameter (temperatures).
Nevertheless, the CLOUD experiment (https://home.cern/fr/science/experiments/cloud)
actually confirmed the impact of (at least artificial) cosmic rays on aerosol growth enhancing cloud formation :
“In its 10 years of operation, CLOUD has made several important discoveries on the vapours that form aerosol particles in the atmosphere and can seed clouds. Although most aerosol particle formation requires sulphuric acid, CLOUD has shown that aerosols can form purely from biogenic vapours emitted by trees, and that their formation rate is enhanced by cosmic rays by up to a factor 100.”
A new run of the CLOUD experiment examines the effect of natural cosmic rays on clouds :
https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/cosmic-rays-clouds
There are too many variables at stake to falsify or confirm the theory with just a parameter (temperatures).
When Svensmark proposed his ‘theory’ he used only temperature as supporting data…
The very notion of ‘global warming’ seems to be temperature based. Perhaps a better moniker would have been ‘global confusion’. That one would be rather immune to criticism…
Svensmark’s theory is in two parts: it predicts a change in cloud cover and assumes that such a change will cool the planet. However any effect on temperature is speculative, not so?
Rather than wonder about temperature effects (which have many contributing variables) how about we judge his prediction based on the claimed mechanism and direct effect: that an increase in CR and GCR leads to an increase of total cloud cover?
If an increase in cloud cover does not lead to a change in measured global temperature, we can engage in additional exploration to find out why it doesn’t.
… which is exactly the problem the alamists faced from 2000 AD onwards when the late 20th c. rise failed to fulfil their claims and they had to morph to “climate change” then “climate weirding” and other such stupidity to maintain their pseudo-scientific rhetoric.
Thanks for the update!
I thought they had buried this arc of research completely. Good to know it is still investigated.
Good point, Leif.
Svensmark had a good hypothesis, but it has shown to fail after ~2007.
I wonder if there are geothermal effects on cloud formation as well.
http://phzoe.com/2020/03/11/40-years-of-climate-change/
Any energy storage object has a phase lag. This one will be no different.
Yes, indeed. One part are the oceans, another the atmosphere and its density.
Anybody ever wondered why the temperature on Venus is so well distributed between poles and equator, night and day site where it is less on Earth and even less on Mars? Density of atmosphere and convection.
Ron,
Venus rotates slowly, which causes little oblateness in its geothermal distribution. This causes a similar temperature at all latitudes.
http://phzoe.com/2019/12/25/why-is-venus-so-hot/
@Zoe Phin
No. Really no.
The Moon does not rotate faster then Earth but has way higher amplitudes between North and South and night and day. Answer: no atmosphere.
Ron,
I was talking about Venus.
Venus’ SURFACE receives between 0 and 34 W/m^2 (poles and equator) from the Sun. Since Venus geothermally produces ~16750 W/m^2, the abscence of an additional 34 W/m^2 makes almost no difference to temperature.
The moon on the other hand is almost totally controlled by insolation – which is different for different latitudes.
Where do you get the number 34 W/m2 from?
Earth receives more and is farther from the sun. Makes no physical sense at all.
Zoe
It is beginning to look like you possess Thor’s Hammer, and everything looks like an anvil to hit.
I’m Valkyrie. I fly on a winged white horse. I drop truth bombs as I fly.
The model might be just too simplistic. You would need aerosols and sufficient water vapor in the right composition of winds and heights and temperature gradients etc. to get sufficient number of clouds.
Clouds are cooling. But without clouds more aerosols don’t help that much. More cosmic rays might be increasing the chance of generating clouds but they might not be sufficient for generating clouds.
About cooling and warming: AMO, PDO, ENSO are not well understood but might override any cosmic ray impact on climate so far. AMO and ENSO have been positive most of the recent time.
ENSO is neutral at the moment but the forecast from NOAA for autumn has increased chances for La Niña conditions. Let’s just wait and see.
The paper from the Japanese(?) group about the correlation of cosmic rays and the eruptions of certain volcano types might be another explanation how the effect on cloud formation could be more indirect than Svensmark’s initial theory.
Too many variables.
What Cloud proved was that cosmic rays increase cloud formation in the presence of biogenic vapors. Most clouds, according to Kirkby are today seeded by sulfuric acid not by biogenic vapors like they used to be pre-industrial revolution. This was according to a statement he made in 2015.
But about the exact same time, another paper came out, and said that in the Southern hemisphere most clouds were formed by biogenic vapors from plankton, so Kirkby’s statement about sulfuric acid could only be true for the Northern Hemisphere.
So where Svensmark’s theory seems to be most likely to be true is in the Southern hemisphere where we have a paucity of stations that could confirm this. Moreover the Southern hemisphere is far cloudier than the Northern hemisphere.
But I think it is a bit premature to say things like Svensmark’s theory is false. I don’t think anyone has any idea of how long it would take to make a significant drop in global temperature.
Leif;
Thank you for your continued comments here on WUWT.
It seems to me that to suggest that a lack of temperature increase by a single variable, cosmic rays, refutes the theory is akin to current climate theory that temperature is driven by a single variable, aka carbon dioxide.
So would you agree that since we have had periods of stagnant temperature increase while CO2 increases refutes current CO2 climate theory?
If not, would that also not mean that Svensmark’s theory is also subject to the complexities of the atmospheric processes and may not have been falsified?
Svensmark’s theory is that cosmic rays can form nucleating particles onto which water vapor can form and create clouds.
In the real world, there are already many other things that can form nucleating particles. For much of the 20th century, human pollution created so many nucleating particles that any additional particles caused by cosmic rays would have been difficult to measure.
The claim that a couple of years worth of data hasn’t shown the looked for signal proves the theory to be incorrect is just not supportable.
But that pollution only applies to the Northern hemisphere. The Southern hemisphere is pristine. Only ten percent of the world’s population lives in the Southern hemisphere. And in the Southern hemisphere biogenic vapors from plankton form the cloud condensation nuclei. And the Southern hemisphere is far cloudier than the Northern. The place to really test Svensmark’s theory is the place where we have a paucity of weather stations to collect the data to do it.
Another way to ‘save’ the idea is to point to longer term ocean cycles in AMO, ENSO, and PDO temp. anomaly.
Basically, any under-specified model attempting to refute other under-specified models is not helping the situation.
Yep, fixed. My bad.
‘ the sun’s magnetic field modulates galactic cosmic rays, and more cosmic rays create more atmospheric clod seeds in Earths atmosphere’
Aren’t there enough clods already?
Hi Leif!!! I hope you and yours are well.
Stay safe and healthy, all.
Bob
Seconded. I always value Dr Svalgaard’s input. Here’s wishing you and yours are doing, and shall remain, well. (That goes for all as well as Leif Svalgaard and Bob Tisdale).
“Then the fires began.”
There is an upside to fiber-optic cable
With all its hardened steel and copper power-carrying capacity? Those long-haul undersea cables (and many underground terra fiber bundles) carry high voltage DC, so as to power the necessary repeaters that are spaced out every few dozen-to-hundred kilometers.
I would suppose however that there is a fair amount of ‘earth shielding’ some distance underground, and especially in oceans and other bodies of highly conductive water. So, maybe even ordinary cables are well protected.
Thing is, one has to wonder about the whole worldwide network of telephone cables as well as power transmission lines. Supposedly, the reason the telegraphs had such problems was the LENGTH of their cables. Single wires might span hundreds of miles between the larger cities. Earth was used as the ‘other conductor’ in the circuits of the day. Between the two: elevated conductors and a big ol’ Earth conducting below, well … quite the current could be induced.
Remembering back to the era of this article — 1921 — I am reminded that back then the humungous amounts of power we now carry were definitely NOT being carried about on long-haul transmission lines. Some, sure. But not hordes. Now, literally all power is transmitted from generating stations to the regional ‘grids’ that span thousands of kilometers. Power is synchronized, combined, leveled, switched and comported all over the place, in just-about-perfect phase harmony. 60 Hz in North America, 50 Hz elsewhere. Only a few ° of phase lag or lead from most-every nominal generator to The Grid. Amazing.
But it is that amazing synchrony that could most easily be rendered moot if the kinds of Carrington geomagnetic storm events come unbidden some poorly timed day.
The various generators and switching yards have extraordinary monitoring equipment to detect ‘legs out of phase’, and to cut them off without warning, if they lead … or lag … too much. In seconds-to-minutes time frames.
Once cut out, many of the same systems will ‘sync-them-back-in if the legs reattain their correct phase and voltage. This is GOOD! However once a leg is dropped, it it was supplying substantial power to the switching station’s notion of a downwind grid, well … the drop in load will cause the ‘spinning assets’ to spin faster. Kind of like how an engine will rev up when tires begin to squeal and slip. That does nothing good for “staying in phase” from the automated equipment’s point of view.
On timescales of many-seconds-to-minutes, power stations throttle (unless nuclear) in response to the load drop. Some will cut out entirely. Others come ‘down to phase’, and lock into the GPS timed ‘phase standard’ everyone on the planet can receive. Presumably, things will reconnect soon after. Very likely, a fair amount of manual human intervention would also be needed, to analyze the situation and come up with informed, code, practicum, or policy decisions … not so easily encoded in a switchyard’s teeny-tiny-phase-sensor-brain.
Anyway…
Food for thought.
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Protection systems are too slow so the risks in the transmission system is fried transformers, followed by a world shortage. Also potential to speed up corrosion in long gas pipelines.
These days there are wide area networks, intercommunication trips, synchrophasors that are streamed at a very high rated and recorded in Phasor management units.
The goal is real time ultra high speed control on the grid, but right now it allows detailed reconstruction of the grid pattern at the moment of a fault or other issue.
These synchrophasors produce interesting maps that look sort of like weather systems.
It is mainly thought of to provide the kind of microcontrol needed for renewables scattered all over the place, coming on and off intermittently as opposed to large steady coal or nuclear power plants.
So technology designed to try and manage crappy intermittent power is part of the answer to a major solar event.
“I hope”
These protection systems are fast enough to protect against lightning strikes.
Has anyone ever built representative equipment, and exposed it to radiation to replicate the effects … rather than model it.
It depends on what you mean with “representative equipment”.
On a smaller scale we do, but we do not have equipment simulating what the Sun happens to do to us on a large scale.
On a small scale we have a lot of knowledge, experience and equipment. Most electronic equipment goes through many tests, in order to satisfy safety, functionality in many environments and not least to satisfy the customer with an ISO certificate.
To what degree the electronic equipment and installation is EMC protected, is down to the usual amount you are willing to pay. This is both a political and GDP dependent question.
In 1921 it was not unusual for low and high voltage wires to be cotton-insulated, sometimes even asphalt-saturated. About then rubber was also being used, obviously natural.
Enginer01,
That’s what I’m getting at. Rebuild the old equipment – bare solid copper, fiber and tar wrapped, wood boards, slow fuses, etc. Then put it in modern well characterized, chamber until it bursts into flame.
If someone hasn’t done it, I’m gonna start scraping up money because it sounds like fun
Pat
Much of the electrical protection relays in the grid are double faraday cage design with multiple grounding circuits for different pathways, safety, high frequency garbage, induced surges.
Whether this protects from a once in 100 years solar event is an experiment I wait to see.
The equipment can be stellar and if the substation ground grid is not, then I guess “poof”.
As we say in electrical engineering, never let the magic smoke out of the box, each apparatus only has a limited amount.
Links to numerous article from the USA press on wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1921_geomagnetic_storm
U.S. Air Force scientists S. M. Silverman and E. W. Cliver wrote a paper I’ve just briefly looked at, available at this
very long link but the article looks interesting
Typoo while typing the link, doesn’t work
Sorry, link doesn’t work. It’s behind paywall on Science direct, but for my own use i have it here http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/15May1921.pdf
May 1921 SSN = 22.2 on the old uncorrected scale, the SC15 min was couple of years later around mid 2013. From the paper:
May was not particularly active, a period of spotless days, from 4 to 7 May, preceded the period of interest here. The Greenwich Observatory comments : “A big complex sport (magnetic class) unique for its size on the solar equator and of great observational interest because of the distribution of magnetic polarities ….”
typo ‘around mid 1923’
May 1921 SSN = 22.2 on the old uncorrected scale
Using the old scale is not advisable any more.
It would be like using the Reamur temperature scale, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9aumur_scale
Hi doc, nice to hear from you, in Balkans where I come from we are a bit slow in catching up with fancy inventions.
with appropriate help, I’m sure that even you can get up-to-date.
All I know if there is a Carrington or 1921 event I’m into the wine cellar and not coming out until all of the wine is gone, because if you go outside it could bake your cookies.
What happens to radio transmission during a strong solar storm? Can one expect electrical domestic connection boards to catch fire the way telegraph connections did?
Radio will be impacted in a significant way. Radio communications from an airport tower or between air traffic controllers and aircraft could be affected badly. I would also be worried about residential solar installations connected to large banks of batteries. I don’t know if installations like this have ever tested for what would happen – from long power outages to fires. Military satellites are probably hardened well enough to withstand the impacts but how about commercial commercial satellites such as those used by Direct TV? How about the computers in today’s automobiles? It wouldn’t take much of an impact to cause a lot of traffic problems. Power substations may be able to protect themselves by shedding load but what happens downstream? What happens to generators in diesel back up setups or the electric generators in railroad engines (lots of copper in those that can act as transformers).
Hmmm. Mention of deisrl backup generators brings Fukushima to mind.
I wonder if nuke plants are hardened against this kind of thing.
Let’s not panic. Engineers know about the Carrington event and how to protect against a repeat. We may have a cool period ahead, but no Maunder Minimum for 400 years (half of a Jose cycle). Nothing that can’t be managed by smart farmers.
“Let’s not panic. ”
pochas94, ….. don’t be talking silly.
Of course they will panic “BIG TIME”, …… just like they did out of fear of the Coronavirus Pandemic after the news media and Democrat politicians told them they were going to die iffen they didn’t stay home, locked in their basements with their faces covered with a mask.
Are there any estimates of how often similar CMEs occur on the Sun? and of how often they hit earth?
On the page 5 (526) of the USAF paper I linked to there is a table of magnetic storms 1868–1998 (based on the aa-index intensity)
NOAA SPACE ENVIRONMENT SERVICES CENTER
Solar Proton Events Affecting the Earth Environment Preliminary Listing 1976 – present
May be interesting too
Unfortnately, the data collections I found end 2010
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/RELATED_INDICES/AA_INDEX/AA_MONTH
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/geomag/indices.html
If someone has newer ???
Or did they change to another ndex ? AP/KP….
From the article: “If the May 1921 storm hit today, “I’d expect it to lead to most, if not all, of the impacts outlined in the 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering report led by Paul Cannon,” says Hapgood. “This could include regional power outages, profound changes to satellite orbits, and loss of radio-based technologies such as GPS. The disruption of GPS could significantly impact logistics and emergency services.”
The United States Congress and the President should spend the money to strengthen the U.S. electrical grid. They already have a plan formulated that will cover the weaknesses of the electrical grid, and it is a relatively cheap fix at just a few billion dollars in cost. The holdup in the past was who would pay for it, the government or the electric companies. This needs to be resolved.
China has the ability to do great damage to the U.S. electrical grid, and now that we are no longer friends, and we see that the Chinese leadership has no compunctions against attacking us, we should be prudent and protect ourselves from an avenue of attack that would be even more devastating to our society than the Wuhan virus.
Instead of putting our hospitals on hold as happened with the Wuhan virus, our hospitals would not be able to run at all if hit by an electromagnetic pulse. We would all be sitting at home as we are doing now, but in the case of an EM event we would be sitting there in the dark, with no television or telephones, and the transportation sector would be unable to function. Millions of us would be dead in such an event.
Let’s spend a few billion dollars now to keep something like that from happening. Cheap insurance.
“Let’s spend a few billion dollars now to keep something like that from happening. Cheap insurance.”
But, but, but …… the Democrats and Rhinos in Congress have more important “fish to fry”, …… like convicting Trump of a federal crime and regaining control of the Senate and the White House (POTUS).
Get a grip, Tom.
from : http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/
“If large power transformers (LPT) are destroyed by a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) electromagnetic pulse (EMP), cyber-attack, sabotage, severe weather, floods, or simply old age, parts or all of the electric grid could be down in a region for 6 months to 2 years. This is because the USA imports 85% of them, there is competition with other nations for limited production and raw materials such as special grade electrical steel.
LPTs are custom built, with long lead times to design, manufacture, and deliver, with components depending on long foreign production and supply chains. The United States large power transformers are ageing faster than they’re being replaced, and even more are needed for new intermittent renewable generation, which has the potential to damage them if not integrated carefully into the existing electric grid. There are possibly tens of thousands of LPT’s in America, mostly built between 1954 and 1978, so an increasing percentage of these aging LPT’s will need to be replaced within the next few decades.”
This is a very sobering paper.
One would have thought that LPT manufacture would be a strategic industry, as important as building military aircraft and aircraft carriers.
Maybe the economists think that production should be outsourced to the Chinese as they are offen cheaper!
Incidentally I wonder how it will be for electrically powered Schnabel railcars and Goldhofer trucks that are used to move them from factory to their usage site.
Maybe they will have their own diesel powered engine to supply the electricity needed!
How many windmills are needed to provide the energy to make them?
One ends up thinking that the zealots don’t have a clue about the realities of heavy engineering.
“thus increasing cloud cover and cooling the planet.”
I say it again and again and… CLOUDS ARE WARMING THE PLANET!!!
All it takes to learn this utter important basic fact, is to look up weather records. Of course people are way too busy modelling their computers and theorizing over what they do not understand, so that they have no time doing science as it is supposed to be..
+10
Leitwolf: I have looked up the weather records – well actually satellite cloud and SST records. Over the period of available data (over 30 years) SSTs increased while cloud cover decreased. That makes it extremely unlikely that clouds warm the planet. There are plenty of papers associating rising global temperature with falling cloud cover, see for example Pokrovsky 2019 https://journals.eco-vector.com/0205-9614/article/view/11444/pdf
[SST = Sea Surface Temperature. Cloud data is not available over the whole satellite era – not that I could find.]
Have a look at this site
Or read the PDF – Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate
That is NOT how it works, in fact it is not even sciene. You need to test a hypothesis with solid empiric data. It is not enough to trough some chicken bones to read the truth from it.
Actually there is other “research” suggesting cloud cover has increased and it reduced global warming!? Meaning it would have been even worse if not, and thus explaining why warming was not as strong as models suggested.
The beautiful thing about weather records is that we have shitloads of them. So we can look at certain correlations without statistical uncertainties as we have no issue with sample size. What these records tell us is, it is warmer with clouds, and colder without. It is that simple.
No.
The thing that makes me skeptical of a major effect from clouds is that cloud formation is a thermodynamically reversible process, meaning that cloud formation can have no effect on the local energy balance. Actual precipitation is a different story, a definite negative feedback on global warming.
+10
About the grid transformers in case of an 1921 event:
A segment from About NBC News Digital “How We’ll Safeguard Earth From a Solar Storm Catastrophe”
Carl. –> “The Department of Homeland Security has a Recovery Transformer program devoted to designing and building a type of easily deployable transformer that [b]can be[/b] installed anywhere in an emergency. And the Department of Energy (DOE) [b]is working on[/b] a “strategic transformer reserve” — a supply of extra transformers that [b]can be[/b] trucked throughout America if necessary.” (Bold by me)
A lot of iffy words in there that make me think it is pie in the sky!
Carl,
It would be interesting because if the warehouse where the substitute transformers are kept is farther away from the place(s) of need than a half-tank of gas/diesel, then the installation crew may have difficulty getting back home. After all, the gas stations now require electricity to pump fuel.
These days whenever someone around me sneezes I worry about a coronal mass ejection.😁
Drink a Corona with lime. You’ll be fine. :))
“Excess cosmic rays pose a health hazard to astronauts and polar air travelers, affect the electro-chemistry of Earth’s upper atmosphere and may help trigger lightning.”
This quote is exactly in line with reality as seen in North America (increase in electrical discharges caused by increased ionization by secondary galactic radiation).
In the above quote, there is no question of an increase in cloudiness, but of electro-chemical changes in the upper atmosphere.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/Cutoff.html
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/oceanography/wrap_ocean_analysis.pl?id=IDYOC007&year=2020&month=05
Typo FYI – “more cosmic rays create more atmospheric clod seeds in Earths atmosphere”, “clod”.
BTW – A very interesting article.
Not a typo, it’s how Michael Mann was created, he’s definitely a clod.
We find all kinds of anomalies in nature, like cancer cells. The Cosmos starts out to make a cloud, and ends up with another anomalous clod. Nuts.
The sun is in lockdown because it has a corona virus.
Another Carrington type event is overdue. This time, with the world so wired up, it would cause massive economic disruption in some nations already hit by the scamdemic.
Those nations that do not have their grids fried will be at a distinct economic advantage. There will be calls again that the crisis calls for One World Government and calls for this being the impetus to go 100% renewable.
If we do not bow down to these demands, we will be branded “racists.”
Overdue.
Maybe that could be said about major earthquakes. If continental plates are shifting but a fault is locked, can build up strain (that is, deformation) that can suddenly let go in a massive earthquake.
What makes a massive Earth-directed coronal mass ejection, overdue? There may be a certain, small probability of such a thing every year, and the more years we put off “hardening the grid” or whatever the remediation, the more chance of getting zapped without being prepared.
But is this chance greater this year and the year before or next year? I don’t think the Sun builds up earthquake-type strain, making the even more likely if it hasn’t happened in a long while?
And the one world government (i.e. the UN) will, once again, demonstrate their absolute ignorance of how “green” energy works. Solar installations will see induced voltages that will likely destroy any current or volltage controllers followed by destruction of connected battery banks, especially in residential installatons. Wind towers that do not have their propelllers feathered will see the feathering motors damaged leaving the towers vulnerable to the next high wind event. They will probably see the actual generators damaged because of the large number of copper windings involved.
Green power will probably see just as much damage as any other form of electric generation.
It doesn’t matter how many windings a motor has, because those wires go in both directions. As a result the energy cancels.
Mark,
So transformers don’t work? Electromagnets (ie.g. a nail wrapped in wire) doesn’t work? My EE professors lied to me 50 years ago?
So we don’t have to worry about EMP or coronal ejections? Someone needs to tell the government!
By May 25, huge amounts of rain will fall in the northeast of the US.
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=42.2;-77.1;5&l=rain-ac&t=20200525/0000
How long did the The Maunder Minimum last 60 years?
How long were the high altitude aerosols from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815. in the air?
The Maunder Minimum, also known as the “prolonged sunspot minimum”, is the name used for the period around 1645 to 1715
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
Also how did Mt. Tambora in 1815. do this 100 years after the Maunder Minimum.
“The cold Maunder Minimum, where this claim originates, was also accompanied by huge amounts of high altitude aerosols from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815. It is likely the cause of the “year without a summer” not the lack of sunspots”.
Me confused
And I think Willis has shown that cooling started sharply just before Tambora…
Has he? Where?
yep – this is a mistake:
“The Dalton Minimum” would fit quite better in this context.
Correct, Anthony has confused the early 19th Century Dalton Minimum with the deeper late 17th Century Maunder minimum.
indeed!
Mobile earth moving equipment typically is tested to ensure it is immune to the effects of 100 V/meter electromagnetic fields.
Rich
You said, “Mobile earth moving equipment typically is tested to ensure it is immune to the effects of 100 V/meter electromagnetic fields.” I should hope so because that is a typical vertical gradient between the ground and the ionosphere.
“Of course with adjustments de jour being the current mission of climate scientists that are the gatekeepers of the surface data, we may never know for sure.” (See below at end of mail.)
The biggest problem would probably be the numerous windmills, and all the solar collectors. Windmills generate AC, variable frequency and voltage depending on the wind strength, which has to be rectified to DC and then turned back to AC at grid voltage and frequency. Frazzle a few of these rectifiers and inverters and the grid is down, even if the power lines survive. And if the grid is down it is very difficult to get the inverters providing power at the proper frequency, which is why it took such a lot of time to get things working again in South Australia. SA was not helped by a few of the grid towers falling as well.
But we know one thing, the cause of the 1921 ‘event’ was Donald Trump. Who else could have had such a maleficent effect of the power system?
+1
When BC Hydro was about to spend $1 billion to replace all 1.5 million our analogue induction disc meters with “Smart Meters”, I inquired about likely effect of a future Carrington type event. “Don’t actually know” was the answer.
Elizabeth May, long time environmental activist and the sole Canadian Green Party parliamentary member, opposed them on the grounds that their wireless “emissions” caused cancer.
Ironically, the prime rationale was the ability for “demand management”, the utilities power to turn off your appliances to shed load when the grid is stressed….as in clouds passing over a major solar plant or the wind dropping inconveniently.
Yes
And people actually listen to her, as neurologically delayed as she is
Such a joke
This article linked the Maunder Minimum (1645~1715) global cooling event to the Tambora eruption (1815), however, these two events occurred 100 years apart, so there is no causation/correlation between these 2 events.
Perhaps the author meant to link the Dalton Minimum (1790~1830) to the Tambora eruption in 1815?
I’ve always dated the Little Ice Age as spanning from 1280~1820 as it corresponds to the following four GSM events: Wolf (1280~1350), Sporer (1450~1550), Maunder (1645~1715), and Dalton (1790~1830).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/19/laki-caused-1783-could-icelands-bardarbunga-volcano-trigger-another-year-without-a-summer/#comment-1348190
Mount Tambora
[Excerpt from wiki]
With an estimated ejecta volume of 160 km3 (38 cu mi), Tambora’s 1815 outburst was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The explosion was heard on Sumatra island more than 2,000 km (1,200 mi) away. Heavy volcanic ash falls were observed as far away as Borneo, Sulawesi, Java, and Maluku Islands. Most deaths from the eruption were from starvation and disease, as the eruptive fallout ruined agricultural productivity in the local region. The death toll was at least 71,000 people, of whom 11,000–12,000 were killed directly by the eruption;[6] the often-cited figure of 92,000 people killed is believed to be overestimated.[7]
The eruption caused global climate anomalies that included the phenomenon known as “volcanic winter”: 1816 became known as the “Year Without a Summer” because of the effect on North American and European weather. Crops failed and livestock died in much of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.[6]
[end of excerpt]
[Excerpt from my above post]
The Dalton Minimum had 2 back-to-back low SC’s with SSNmax of 48 in 1804 and 46 in 1816. Tambora erupted in 1815.
Two of the coldest years in the Dalton were 1814 (7.75C year avg CET) and 1816 (7.87C year avg CET).
[end of excerpt]
Commentary:
So, for CET’s, it appears that the 1815 eruption of Tambora had minimal effect, since CET’s in 1814 were slightly lower than CET’s for 1816.
However, the anecdotal evidence suggests that 1816 was a much harder year for humanity than 1814.
What to believe?
@Addendum
“Experts believe we are about to enter the deepest period of sunshine “recession” ever recorded as sunspots have virtually disappeared.“
April 2020 (+/- some uncertainty) was forecast to be the minimum between cycles 24 and 25, so lack of sunspots is not a surprise. SC25 progression looks ‘normal’, in spite of sparse activity:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
And activity will soon pick up. The Stereo Ahead solar satellite (currently about 60 degrees “ahead” in Earth’s orbit) has spotted an active region getting ready to emerge on the east limb.
https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Stereo-A is actually in the behind position, at 73º behind Earth as of today (and closing).
The active regions you mention are both at -90 heliographic longitude, the NH one at +32N and a smaller one at -28S and are about to rotate into Earth’s view.
Then Stereo-A is even further ‘Ahead’ then I realized — by about 180° 🙂
Both regions have now rotated into view
https://helioviewer.org/
18-19 September 1941 was a big one too. They happend around the time that Jupiter lapped Saturn, which is a 20-year event, on these occasions with Uranus nearby in opposition in 1921 and with Uranus on the same side of the sun in 1941.