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Surprise Discovery In Earth's Upper Atmosphere
elyons sends word out of UCLA of a completely unexpected discovery in the physics of the Sun-Earth interaction — a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. "'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. '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. 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. [It turns out that] if it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger.'" The researchers have two papers on the discovery coming out in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Saying "It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun" when they're talking about the interaction of the solar wind and the magnetosphere is more than a little disingenuous....
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Okay so when I first saw the title, I read it as "Surprise! Discovery In Earth's Upper Atmosphere" and thought the landing a couple of days ago was a hoax or something.
"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun."
The orbiting teapot must have boiled! ;)
> "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,
That is, the likelihood of "substorms" in Earh's ionoshpere is a function of how "northward"
or "southward" Earth's manetosphere is. More southward, more storms, worse
satellite TV reception.
> 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.
There's this "interplanetary magnetic field" between the Sun and Earth. The solar wind
is Earthward charged particles from the Sun. These particles interact with the Earth's
magnetisphere. When you have large changes in the solar wind, there are more
substorms, and worse satellite TV reception.
So, pseudo-diff-eq, their contribution is the second term (or maybe I'm missing the point):
substorm likelihood =
southwardness of magnetosphere +
change of solar wind intensity with respect to time
Poor graduate student. So much data...
It's good to see some basic science being done though. More, please!
I suppose its relevant to point out the polarized views we see spewing out of the US are not interacting with the earths magnetosphere.
The problem many people (or at least I!) have with PARTS of the GW / global climate change conversation is that it's clear that we have at best a minimalistic understanding of climate. I don't even think most climate scientists would deny this... Like you point out--this is a great example of a really interesting (and fundamental!) discover. New discoveries in terms of carbon sequestration (or lack thereof in many cases), cloud vapour / temperature interactions, etc are being found all the time. The technology we have available to monitor global temperatures and carbon levels, arctic ice, etc, and the tools (better satellites, etc) are likewise exponentially improving.
I don't think you can find a person out there who would deny that strong scientific progress is being made.
The problem is with the non-science aspects of the movement. Heck, the problem is that it IS a movement. Things like Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and some scientists who do seem to be more interested in a political agenda more than a scientific one do not help. That is to say, of all the parts of what you call the "hoopla about GW" (nice desc!) we can really do without the hysteria and the partisan politicking (why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose ;-) )
Why is this being tagged "climate change" with people yammering about global warming? This is a previously unexpected form of energy transfer but would have been occuring since...oh...our planet had a magnetosphere and there is not a single mention in the article concerning climate change or global warming.
Larry: This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down.
Interviewer: So, the temperature actually goes up when the sun sets?
Larry: Er, no.
Interviewer: No? What does happen then?
Larry: Um, well... the temperature goes... down, I guess.
Interviewer: Okay. Thanks for that Larry.
TFA is one of the most confused articles I've seen in a long time.
If Stuart Wolpert had just let the scientists write it, chances are it might be intelligible. As it is it was muddled, convoluted, mis-stated, and just plain wrong on many points.
Never let a journalism student, or worse yet, one who hung around after graduating into the Science buildings.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Whales and flowerpots.
Disappointment is me.
(why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose ;-) )
Is 'both sides are filled with morons' partisan?
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Yeah, I know... and I get why Anderson Cooper would think that's hilarious.
What I don't understand is why your average garden variety left-winger on the internet (where you tend to hear/see it the most)--whether it be slashdot, kos, wherever else--thinks it's so hilarious. I guess what it boils down to for me is, I think it's downright odd how the Democratic party which wholeheartedly embraced liberty, freedom, and the "common man" at its core a generation ago--and still pays lip service to such things--has of late become so dominated by primarily the upper middle classes and the highly educated who are perfectly content to just trust in the government (and ad hom those who don't). I don't understand the scorn for the lower middle class / poor / etc who seem to be at these kind of rallies.
I'll be the first to admit that there are a lot of things I don't understand... but the pure vitriol and loathing of the populist townhall protestors and tax protestors is just ... weird! ... to me.
I don't understand the scorn for the lower middle class / poor / etc who seem to be at these kind of rallies.
I see. You have not been to one of these. It is NOT the lower middle class/poor. I went to one in Denver. Watching ppl drive away in Suburbans is not my idea of lower middle class. Think that there is a real reason why it is pushed by rush?
The idea that this represents the common man would be like having the king of england attend the boston tea party. Basically, the very ppl, neo-cons, that ran up the vast majority of the debt are attending it and trying to point the finger at obama. Now, I am not a fan of Obama's action (though even as a Libertarian, I voted for him to avoid the thought of Palin as a pres), I can say that he was put in a horrible situation. OTH, I have not been impressed by his actions.
But the tea baggers keep pointing their finger at dems while out and out refusing to take responsibility for the nightmare that they got us into. These are the same sets of idiots that voted in W. TWICE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Concern troll. Al Gore and AEI with their daffodil ads are not the same thing. Al Gore may be a politician, he may not be your kind of politician, but the science is on his side.
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
The climate change "debate" is pretty well reality vs PR and is occurring because people want to make money out of it. If the wackos in the nuclear lobby had kept out of it with stupid ideas like carbon credits and carbon taxes to nobble their opposition it would all be a lot simpler - things have been overhyped in both directions.
I agree. I think that the west is in for a LOT of trouble by trying to take full responsibility and to be the ones doing things. Kyoto has been a disaster since NONE of the participants have met any real goals (those who did not have to change DID make theirs; whoppie). I can not stand W, but he was right on not participating. In 3 short years, China double their CO2 emissions, and they are on the path to double it again in 3 years. Scarey. Ppl are not paying attention.
France and Canada have the right idea in taxes, but it is being implemented wrong. It should be a cap on new CO2 emissions (as in absolutely no new emissions, without taking out the old stuff), and then a tax on ALL GOODS based on the CO2 emissions from whence they came from (not what went into it, but how much emissions from where it comes). If you do that, then ALL NATIONS will end up competing to get their emissions low FAST. In fact, because of the nature of pollution (it spreads everywhere), it should be a tax on the pollution that went into the good. Yes, I know. That hurts the economy. So, you start it out at say 5%, and then have regions graded on what their emissions are. Most importantly, Over time, RAISE THE TOP RATE, say 1% a year. For example, France might be 20% of 5%. OTH, China would be 100% of 5%, and probably so would USA, and other nations. The simple fact is, that every country will RIGHTLY KNOW that the approaches being taken will hurt THEIR NATION. OTH, this other approach is EXTREMELY FAIR to all. In addition, since it is applied to ALL GOODs, it can not run into trouble, other than the formulas (what percentage of the top rate) used. But that is a different issue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are legitimate reasons to be unconvinced, no matter what the affiliations of the people offering them may be.
We have an hypothesis about the reaction of the earth's climate to CO2 emissions. The hypothesis is first, that the additional CO2 warms by absorbing IR radiation. That this will occur is not subject to dispute, its basic physics, and has been known for around 100 years. It was only partially known to Aarhenius, who seems to have got the effect right but to have overestimated its magnitude, but the effect itself has been known. This is a relatively minor component of the hypothesis. If this effect were all there was, doubling of CO2 levels from around 300ppm to around 600ppm would raise the average temperature of the planet in the lower troposphere by roughly 1 degree centigrade. This would not be terribly serious - in fact, it might even improve life, and its of the same order as natural variations anyway.
The second hypothesized effect is that when the climate warms by any amount, from any cause, there is positive feedback. This feedback amplifies the effect. So the warming of 1 degree caused by CO2 rises is hypothesized to lead to further warming of a further few degrees. The amounts are uncertain. The total warming effect could be anything from 2-5 degrees C. Even at the lower levels, this would lead to significant problems, and at the higher levels, particularly over 5 degrees, we would be looking at climate disaster.
However, its a question whether the climate reacts to warming by positive feedback, and if so how strongly, or by negative feedback. To have concerns about feedback is not denialism or flat-earth -ism. Its quite reasonable.
This is where we come into the evidence issue. The decisive evidence for feedback would be if the climate were now genuinely warming faster than or differently from ever before. And this is where the question of the refusal of the climate science community to reveal their data becomes important. We have Jacoby, d'Arrigo, Mann, Thompson, Jones and others refusing to reveal the data which would allow replication and verification of their results. Their defenders meanwhile abuse everyone who does not simply believe, without proof, that the results are as represented.
As long as the data and algorithms are not placed in the public domain for inspection and validation, it is going to be reasonable to be skeptical. All that the authors have to do to eliminate this skepticism is to publish. Until they do, it is going to remain an open question whether there is anything very special going on with climate in terms of the last 2,000 years, and so it will remain an open question whether feedback works the way that the IPCC hypothesizes.
And so, it will remain an open question whether the reaction of the climate machine to an initial warming of 1 degree will be an ultimate stable state of no change, +1, +2 or +5.
In the same way as when I drink a cup of coffee, you cannot predict my future temperature solely by reference to the heat content of the coffee, nor can you make any assumptions without examining the way my body reacts about whether the feedback will be positive or negative, so you need evidence in the form of the behavior of the climate to tell what sort of feedback mechanisms occur. It is very, very odd, inexplicable in fact, that the climate science community seems to see it as positively wrong to ask for the data on what is allegedly going on with the climate to be released. Free the data, free the code, and lets see if the studies prove what they purport to.
There are few changes to the very basic set of facts: that there is warming, and a significant proportion of it is anthropogenic. But there is huge disagreement on the details and especially in predictions. That's to be expected, because many of the systems we're attempting to model have sensitive dependence on parameters and initial conditions. Whether, for example, a shutdown of thermohaline circulation is likely, and under what circumstances, isn't at all well understood--- and that's just picking one large-impact uncertainty.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Based on purely anecdotal evidence, it seems to be getting worse: my impression is that climate scientists who entered the field after it became a partisan political issue are much more likely to have axes to grind one way or another. The 40+ y.o. PhDs entered the field because they were interested in science, but a lot of the under-40 crowd entered the field to join a battle on one side or another.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yeah, the cap/trade is going to be a true disaster in the making. I think that it will be destroying the west. EU pushes their companies to be loyal and stay there, but we have not done that since reagan. Add in more expensive energy, combined with much of Asia having their money fixed against the dollar as well as major trade barriers, I think that we will not only see the wholesale destruction of much of the west, but that our energy bill will have the exact opposite impact. Basically, GE coal plants will simply shift to China/India/Brazil/Mexico, etc and these countries will grab them as a way to get "cheap" energy in relatively quickly.
As to the tax, I think that it really is not that hard. Make is a sales tax, base it on which country the majority of the item came from. Obviously, some companies will try to play games, but, I think that a rap on the hand, along with a stiff fine, will get their attention.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Al Goreâ(TM)s movie was nothing but misrepresented propaganda. I watched his movie and came under the impression that we are screwed. At one point he very dramatically illustrates that see levels will rise by 7 meters. What he conveniently left out was that it will happen in *a millennium*. This is nothing but a documentary by a Micheal Moore environmentalist.
I believe that global warming is real and that something should be done. But I doubt a collection of half truths and over-reaction will be helpful. A calm and rational approach would be much better.
Interesting, first poster says:
Lots of money flowed to W and the neo-cons and now they are gone ...
So, when you throw money/whatever at a problem, it goes away.
This was pretty funny, and not surprisingly, was modded so... then the followup posts this comment:
If I throw money at the democrats will they go away?
For some reason - that was modded troll? I found the second one as equally amusing, and fail to see how the second was any more trollish than the first - particularly when the first even referred to tea-party protesters as "tea-baggers"
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
Do a survey at any green movement rally, and see what percentage of these people are anti-nuclear and anti-GM, or support "alternative" medicine over the conventional (scientific) kind. How many anti-vaxxers would you expect to find in the crowd?
None of this reduces the validity of AGW of course, but it does put paid to the notion that people follow this cause because they are more scientifically rational... indeed, there seems to be a general fear of technology in the green movement (and to be clear, I'm not talking about the scientists here, as much as the supporters).
In short, my global warming skepticism, though a minority view amongst scientists (and I accept that it IS a minority view) is still scientifically based... most of the green movements support of the "consensus" view is not scientifically based at all - it just happens to conform to their world-view.
Minority scientific opinion <> pseudoscience
To me, the most interesting point of this discovery is that it should improve our understanding of shortwave radio propagation.
It has always frustrated me that the same space program that is producing the data needed to understand the physics needed to make accurate, day-to-day predictions of ionospheric propagation -- a hundred-year-old mystery -- is also the same space program that replaced commercial HF communication with satellites, greatly reducing the economic value of such predictions (and, therefore, the science funding to make them). So now that we have the ability, we no longer have the desire . . . unless one is an amateur radio operator, and it's harder to think of an entity lower on the economic value chain than that.
The most difficult path for shortwave links is one that passes near the magnetic poles, like the path from Southeast Asia to the US East Coast that passes over the north magnetic pole. Energy from the solar wind couples into the Earth's magnetic field; in particular, charged particles are directed parallel to the field. This is great for propagation over most of the planet; however, near the poles the magnetic field becomes vertical and these particles are directed perpendicular to the ground, where they form a ring of radio wave attenuation and refraction in the upper atmosphere that closes this path for many days out of a given month. To open this path there has to be minimal energy coupling from the solar wind, and there is very little understanding of when this will occur. Even the best propagation prediction software (e.g., VOACAP and Proplab Pro) is based on statistics, giving one the probability of a given path being open.
This discovery should add to our understanding of how and when these paths will open. Until then, we have to survive on "Space Weather" web sites like these, and turn on a radio to see for ourselves what the day brings.
(Those interested in an accessible introduction to HF propagation can check out K9LA's propagation site.)
really? The pubs had control of congress from 94-2000, while the dems had control of the presendcy; The pubs had TOTAL control of dc from 2000-2006. pubs had WH from 2006-2008, while neither party control congress during that time (dems controlled house, but the pubs had a slight edge on the senate).
So, where did it get us?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms It MASSIVELY shot up when pubs had total control. It does not appear to matter which congress has it, but which president has it. For example, reagan and W never saw a deficit that they did not love. OTH, CLINTON (a dem) fought against the neo-con deficit and turned it around. So do the dem controlled congress of the 60's/70's, who paid off most of WWII debt.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Have you missed the fact that people all across the nation are angry with both republicans and democrats? More than one republican who assumed that he could just get in front of this movement has been booed off the stage.
Politicians are the problem. The republican/democrat distinction is just a distraction. Both sides want to take away your freedoms and your money - they just pay lip service to different ideals when they do it.
why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?!
It's naturally partisan. Everywhere, not just in the developed countries, we have a natural division between wealthy and those with much lower resources. This manifests everywhere as common conflicts of interest, between employer and employee, polluter and those affected, rich people and the envious, etc. Environmentalism naturally falls in with the beliefs of the people with lower resources (and those who purport to represent them). And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that will primarily affect people with few resources. Meanwhile the burden of correcting for the problem (if it exists to the extent claimed) falls on the people with greater resources.
Your unspoken assumption (that the poor and lower class are somehow politically "pure") and revolution must come from the bottom up is ridiculous outmoded 20th century fringe left thinking.
Every western liberal movement in history has been driven by the upper and upper middle classes. Do you people actually think Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were just "middle class" regular Joes? From the Lords in the middle ages who conspired against their king to give us the Magna Carta to the idle over educated wealthy children of Merchants in the 1700-1800s who didn't like the establishment and so decided to use their wealth and connections to agitate and stage liberal revolutions over throwing their respective kings.
Every great western movement against governments has been driven by the well to do who have the time, means and connections to sit around and ponder over throwing the king in the first place.
We have ample opportunity to see what happens when the poor and lower class overthrow their governments and take control by the way. Every third world country and half of Eastern Europe and South America through the 19th and 20th century answered that question.
This uniquely western middle class self hatred must stop.
Simply calling a group "fringe" does not make it so. Fringe relative to whom? Mainstream society is overwhelmingly skeptical, so if anything the pro global warming hug fests that one sees on echo chambers like this are the true fringe.
Whether you like it or not.
Just calling it how I see it btw.
'And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that will primarily affect people with few resources.'
The disruption of the food chain and death of the human race primarily affects people with few resources? *scratches head*
There's a debate about how much positive feedback exists, but the case for negative feedback is very weak. For example, events such as Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events are the best examples of abrupt climate change in the paleoclimate record. These ancient events are worrying because they show the climate has a propensity to shift quickly from one state to another, given even small forcings. That requires positive feedback.
Also, the estimated magnitude of the Milankovitch cycles and other forcings are insufficient to account for the temperature variations observed in ice cores from Vostok and EPICA. This requires positive feedback. In fact, the estimates of positive feedback are too small to bridge the gap.
Approximately 35x faster, which isn't surprising because of the unprecedented (in the last 2 million years) CO2 levels. Also, the warming is happening after the CO2 increase, which makes this warming qualitatively different from all previous deglaciations.
Proxy data are available, Wahl and Ammann have made their code available, the CMIP3 database makes model output public for researchers to perform comparisons, etc. I've previously complained about the (widespread) tendency of scientists to keep their data private to wring every last discovery out of it before making it public. It's worrying, but not a problem unique to climatology. Nor ar all climatologists so hesitant to release their code and data. I publish all my code under the GPLv3, for instance.