Solar​ Storm​ Leak In Earth​'​s Magne​tic Field​

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Solar​ Storm​ Leak In Earth​'​s Magne​tic Field​

January 05, 2009 - 2012: Leaks Found in Earth's Magnetic Field - Scientists have found two large leaks in Earth's magnetosphere, the region around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms

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The earth's magnetic field impacts climate: Danish study
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AFP News
1-12-09

http://www. google. com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h2eLthVbBG2KB4...

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming

"Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics," one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal

He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the prehistoric magnetic field 5,000 years ago based on data drawn from stalagmites and stalactites found in China and Oman

The results of the study, which has also been published in US scientific journal Geology, lend support to a controversial theory published a decade ago by Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark, who claimed the climate was highly influenced by galactic cosmic ray (GCR) particles penetrating the earth's atmosphere

Svensmark's theory, which pitted him against today's mainstream theorists who claim carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for global warming, involved a link between the earth's magnetic field and climate, since that field helps regulate the number of GCR particles that reach the earth's atmosphere

"The only way we can explain the (geomagnetic-climate) connection is through the exact same physical mechanisms that were present in Henrik Svensmark's theory," Knudsen said

"If changes in the magnetic field, which occur independently of the earth's climate, can be linked to changes in precipitation, then it can only be explained through the magnetic field's blocking of the cosmetic rays," he said

The two scientists acknowledged that CO2 plays an important role in the changing climate, "but the climate is an incredibly complex system, and it is unlikely we have a full overview over which factors play a part and how important each is in a given circumstance," Riisager told Videnskab



Dec 16, 2008 - Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field from Shaun Cvar on Vimeo


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Danger ahead as the Sun goes quiet
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New Scientist
07 January 2009 by David Shiga

http://www. newscientist. com/article/mg20126903. 700-danger-ahead-...

THE sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful cosmic rays could falter in the early 2020s, just in time to threaten the health of NASA astronauts as they return to the moon

As well as the 11-year cycle of sunspots and solar flares, the sun's activity experiences longer-term shifts lasting several decades.
The sun is currently in a long-term high, having been relatively active for nearly a century, but it is not known when this will end

To find out, a team led by Jose Abreu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Duebendorf analysed 66 long-term highs from the past 10,000 years, as recorded in fluctuating levels of rare isotopes such as beryllium-10 in ice cores from Greenland. These are produced when cosmic rays break down the nuclei of oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere.
Production of these isotopes peaks when the sun is inactive, as the weaker solar wind lets more cosmic rays enter the solar system, which hit the Earth

Based on the duration of past highs, and the fact that the current one has already lasted 80 years, the team has calculated that its most likely total lifetime is between 95 and 116 years, and they suspect the high will probably end at the shorter end of this range (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.
1029/2008GL035442)

Records of the sun's brightness during the 20th century show that it gets slightly dimmer when it is less active, so could a long-term reduction in activity help to offset global warming? No such luck, says Nigel Weiss from the University of Cambridge, who is a member of Abreu's team.
While there is a rough correspondence between a period of very low activity from 1645 to 1715 and the middle of a period of lower average global temperatures lasting from the late 16th to mid 19th century, leading some to suggest a causal link, this correlation could be a coincidence, Weiss says

Weiss also points out that the sun's brightness changes only slightly with variations in activity. If the sun does dim slightly in the coming decades, he says, this would only reduce the warming expected due to human-induced climate change by 0.1 °C. "It might be discernible, but it would be a blip rather than a major change," he says.
"It is nothing [compared] with the global warming that is now being produced through pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere"

Those most likely to be affected would be astronauts. Beyond the Earth's protective magnetic field, their exposure to the increased cosmic rays let into the solar system due to a weaker solar wind could cause cancer and fertility loss.
One benefit to astronauts would be a decline in the number of solar flares

David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, says the evidence for past lulls is strong, but he is sceptical about the team's attempt to predict the arrival of the next one. "This is a little like trying to predict when someone's winning streak will end," he says.
"We know that it will happen, but reliable predictions are virtually impossible"



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NASA warns of 'space Katrina' radiation storm
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Register UK
By Lewis Page
7th January 2009 09:14 GMT

http://www. theregister. co. uk/2009/01/07/space_katrina/

A study funded by NASA has flagged up yet another terrible hazard for those no longer able to get excited about nuclear war, global pandemics, terrorism, climate change, economic meltdown and asteroid strike Top space brainboxes say that even if the human race survives all those, there is a serious risk of civilisation being brought crashing to its knees by a sudden high-intensity solar radiation storm

The new study, carried out for NASA by the US National Academy of Sciences, might tickle the palate of even the most jaded disaster connoisseur

"Whether it is terrestrial catastrophes or extreme space weather incidents, the results can be devastating to modern societies that depend in a myriad of ways on advanced technological systems," says Professor Daniel Baker of Colorado Uni, an expert in atmospheric and space physics who led the report's authors

In essence, the report, which can be downloaded in pdf here (free registration required) says that sooner or later there will be a solar storm much more powerful than any seen so far in the age of high technology.
Such events have occurred in the past, but as the human race then had very basic electrical power grids (or none at all) and made no use of satellites, it didn't matter

The next space radiation biggy, however, will hit a human civilisation which is becoming more and more dependent on satellites for essential communication and navigation tasks, and whose electrical grids are much more widespread and heavily stressed The impact of a bad geomagnetic spike would be somewhat as though an unbelievably powerful electromagnetic pulse bomb - of the sort favoured by movie villains but not yet available - had gone off:

While a severe storm is a low-frequency-of-occurrence event, it has the potential for long-duration catastrophic impacts to the power grid and its users. Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures, with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in about 12-24 hours; and immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply, and so on ...
Open access on the transmission system has fostered the transport of large amounts of energy across the power system in order to maximize the economic benefit of delivering the lowest-cost energy to areas of demand. The magnitude of power transfers has grown, and the risk is that the increased level of transfers, coupled with multiple equipment failures, could worsen the impacts of a storm event ...

In summary, present U.S. grid operational procedures ... are unlikely to be adequate for historically large disturbance events

The impact on satellites would be even more severe, as spacecraft have less shielding from the Earth's atmosphere - and in some cases from the magnetosphere.
In particular, the present Global Positioning System (GPS) sat constellation, used by almost every navigation system in the world, is regarded as highly vulnerable to a solar event - though new satellites are to go up shortly equipped with a backup signal which will allow errors to be bowled out

In general, however, the assembled brainboxes considered that a solar event was a much greater threat to essential space infrastructure than any evil foreign power - for instance - could possibly be. The US military has previously warned of the risk of a "space Pearl Harbour" - a devastating surprise attack against America's space presence, which could leave the world's sole superpower blinded and crippled.
According to the National Academy, though, the USA should forget about a space Pearl Harbour and worry instead about "a space Katrina, a storm that we should have been prepared for but were not"

The report mentions technological solutions to most of these possible ills, but says that they mostly aren't in place (apart from the GPS alterations) According to Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics division:

"To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun's activity"



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Solar winds strip Venus of atmosphere
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CNN
12-30-08

http://www. cnn. com/2008/TECH/space/12/30/space. spotlight/index. ...


Venus Express has also showed how solar winds are stripping away the atmosphere of Venus.
Venus would probably be more Earth-like if it possessed a magnetic field similar to Earth's that would prevent its atmosphere from losing gases in the form of ionized particles

The sun has probably been stripping away the Venusian atmosphere throughout the planet's 4-billion-year history

Click above image for slideshow of this, and other space phenomenon




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Holes in Earth's magnetic cloak let the solar wind in
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Reuters
19 December 2008

http://www. newscientist. com/article/dn16314-holes-in-earths-magne...

The Earth's protective magnetosphere often develops two large holes that let in the largest leaks of solar wind, scientists say.
Surprisingly, the holes are rended open in an interaction with the Sun's magnetic field that was previously thought to shield the Earth from solar particles

Understanding how these holes form will help them better predict the electrical storms that cause power grid blackouts and auroras, activity that will peak in 2011 or 2012 as sunspots hit their maximum level

Scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco this week said they had been entirely wrong about how solar particles that cause the storms were entering the Earth's magnetosphere, a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from charged particles from the Sun

Scientists once believed that the particles entered when the Sun's magnetic field was aligned opposite to that of the Earth's.
But the team's findings show that 20 times more solar particles enter the Earth's magnetic field when it is aligned in the same direction as the Sun's magnetic field than when the two are opposed

In June 2007, NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft probes flew through one of the tears just as it was opening.
Sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, said team member Jimmy Raeder of the University of New Hampshire

Levee breach
"The opening was huge – four times wider than Earth itself," said Raeder.
"This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible"

In separate research, Wenhui Li, also of the University of New Hampshire, and colleagues offer an explanation.
As charged particles flow out from the Sun, they carry solar magnetic fields past Earth

The team's computer simulations show that even though the Earth's and the Sun's magnetic fields point in the same direction at equatorial latitudes, they point in opposite directions at high latitudes.
When the opposite fields are pressed together, they connect and tear holes in Earth's magnetic field over the poles

Energised particles
However, when solar and terrestrial magnetic fields point in opposite directions and reconnect in a different way, the Sun's charged particles get energised and cause magnetic storms that can overload power lines with excess current, causing widespread blackouts

"If the solar field has been aligned with the Earth's for a while, we now know Earth's field is heavily loaded with solar particles and primed for a strong storm," said Raeder in a statement.
"This discovery gives us a basic predictive capability for the severity of solar storms, similar to a hurricane forecaster's realisation that warmer oceans set the stage for more intense hurricanes"

"In fact, we expect stronger storms in the upcoming solar cycle," he continued.
"The Sun's magnetic field changes direction every cycle, and due to its new orientation in the upcoming cycle, we expect the clouds of particles ejected from the Sun will have a field which is at first aligned with Earth, then becomes opposite as the cloud passes by"

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Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field
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Associated Press
Dec 17, 2008

http://news. yahoo. com/s/ap/20081217/ap_on_sc/sci_earth_breach

LOS ANGELES – Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun's violent blasts, researchers reported Tuesday.
The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites

Scientists have long known that the Earth's magnetic field, which guards against severe space weather, is similar to a drafty old house that sometimes lets in violent eruptions of charged particles from the sun.
Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras or disrupt satellite and ground communications

Observations from Themis show the Earth's magnetic field occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million mph — to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere

Last summer, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at least 4,000 miles thick in the outermost part of the Earth's magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so far

"It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley told an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco

Such breaches are temporary, and the one observed last year lasted about an hour, Oieroset said

Solar flares are a potential danger to astronauts in orbit but generally are not a risk to people on the surface of the Earth

The research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation

Scientists initially believed the greatest solar breach occured when the Earth's and sun's magnetic fields are pointed in opposite directions. But data from Themis found the opposite to be true.
Twenty times more solar wind passed into the Earth's protective shield when the magnetic fields were aligned, Oieroset said

The Themis results could have bearing on how scientists predict the severity of solar storms and their effects on power grids, airline and military communications and satellite signals

The Themis satellites were launched to find the source of brief powerful geomagnetic disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere.