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Space Weather Warning
SallyMac writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a Space Weather Warning. On Friday, May 13th, NOAA detected a 'geomagnetic storm of extreme proportions'. From the article: 'This event registered a 9 on the K-Index, which measures the maximum deviation of the Earth's magnetic field in a given three-hour period...The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest. This was a significant event.' See the article on the NOAA site for more information." Spaceweather.com has details on the resulting auroras.
There was very poor shortwave propagation yesterday. Now I see why...
the 'perfect space storm' of 1859.e rstorm.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/23oct_sup
Hell, it would have been nice to know this in advance...
As it was, got out of work about 0800Z Sunday morning and as I was driving home, thought I saw the most bizarre clouds. When I pulled into the driveway, there were these flashes that moved from west to east in the night sky. Since I live next to a small airfield, I assumed it was the lights from there, but when I looked in that direction, they were turned off. So, drove about 20 minutes west of the big city (damn that light) and was treated to a show that words cannot describe. This being my first aurora event, I had didn't know what to expect. I sat and watched for 45 minutes as the sky literally danced. About 30 minutes in, the aurora moved to right above my head and turned into a completely different show with different bands shooting out above me.
To anyone who hasn't witnessed an aurora, take the time to travel someplace that you can view them. It is totally worth the trip.
Judging by the POES Auroral Activity graphic, things are firing up again. Damn my luck that thundershowers are moving in to cloud things up....
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
All Quiet at the Deblois Wood Chip Power Plant. Not even a blip in the output voltage or vars over the past 12 hours.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Here is the list of "Space Weather Alerts" they offer:
They'll call you with alerts 48-hours in advance when possible. Pretty cool for $4.95/month. Anyone want to buy it for me as a gift?
Get your Unix fortune now!
When you are the first to mention the word "Ion" and "Storm" and then using them to create a joke in relation to the news article.
Jonathanjk.com
Because they didn't have any idea that there was going to be an extreme geomagnetic storm on friday. On friday, there was just an ordinary M8 class flare on the sun. Nothing special, it didn't even seem to be aimed at the Earth, but for some strange reason a glob of solar spittle, carrying solar magnetic field with it, held together or constructively interfered with itself, and we got an extra dose of it.
Kind of like the tornado sirens that go off after the tornado has passed. This was less a warning than a report of something that already happened.
back in the 1800's there was a period of solar activity that was so extreme that aurora was seen in the Carribean and telegraph operators had to disconnect or reverse their batteries!
Just a thought.
Huxley
Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. During my studies in electrical engineering sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. Based on Earths weakening magnetic field and the recent increase in solar intensity, I believe this may be one of the reasons causing global warming. If more radiation hits the Earth, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth due to particle scattering and can global warming be contributed to this? I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.
Actually, it doesn't necessarily start at zero - it's a logarithmic scale so negative magnitudes are still meaningful, if not worth worrying about outside seismology research.
And as for 8 being the upper limit - one of the reasons that the Richter magnitude scale isn't actually used anymore is that it saturates at large magnitudes. In other words as earthquakes keep getting bigger, the richter scale doesn't really keep up - it under-reports the actual size. So an earthquake with a moment magnitude (see below) of 7.5 might have a comparable richter magnitude, but one with a moment magnitude of 8.5 or 9.0 might still only have a richter magnitude of 7.5 or 8.0.
Moment magnitudes are calculated from the area of fault surface that actually ruptures, how much it moves, and the rigidity of the surrounding rock. A fault can propagate over long horizontal distances (~1000 km in the Sumatran earthquake last year) but only down to a point where the crust is still rigid enough to crack. It's this factor that is the main control on upper earthquake size. Other wise the rupture could just keep spreading down. Then you could have stupidly large earthquakes like a magnitude 15 or 20 that would crack the earth in half. Well, not really.
Part of the reason is the the richter magnitude scale is a local magnitude - it's not actually giving the true energy release of an earthquake, but how bad it feels at some nearby point (corrected for distance). It's also a bit of a hold-over from the early days of seismology in California. When people started to realise that the are earthquakes outside California as well, the richter magnitude scheme fell out of favour.
Seismologists don't use the richter (local) magnitude scale anymore really. The reason it's still often reported in the news is that after alarge earthquake, reporters call up their local governmental Geological Survey for a size. If the seismologists then try to give the size in a modern, more accurate scale, the reporters tend to say "Moment magnitude? No one knows what that is - how big was it on the Richter scale?". So, even though it's generally out of date, it still manages to be somewhat self-perpuating.
my GPS has been *really* inaccurate in the past few days. It's also way off on the altitude. (Mountain View, CA is not at 2,800 feet)
Also my Sirius stuff has had more drop-offs than usual, even when the sky was clear outside.