Study Will Explore How Solar Storms Affect Earth’s Atmosphere
UMass Lowell, 4th January 2013
We all rely on local weather forecasts to plan our travels and outdoor activities, or even to decide whether to water the lawn.
But researchers like Prof. Paul Song in the Department of Physics & Applied Physics are also interested in “space weather,” the constantly changing environmental conditions in interplanetary space, especially between the sun’s atmosphere and earth’s outer atmosphere. While meteorologists deal with clouds, air pressure, wind, precipitation and the jet stream, space-weather scientists concentrate on changes in the ambient plasma (ionized gas), solar wind, magnetic fields, radiation and other matter in space.
“Predicting space weather is the next frontier in weather forecasting,” says Song, who directs UMass Lowell’s Center for Atmospheric Research (CAR).
Comment: More news of space weather research but we are told clearly that space weather is affecting Earth’s atmosphere and weather… I believe there is enough information in the public domain to justify the belief that space weather is the true reason for the panic amongst scientists about extreme weather… Press releases from NASA and the European Space Agency amongst other scientific bodies and groups in recent years informs us clearly that Earth is rapidly losing its cosmic defenses. The scientific research carried out already, especially by NASA, informs us that there is a distribution of electric currents linking the magnetosphere with the ionosphere. The Honorary Chairman of the World Forum International Congress “GEOCATACLYSM-2011” states in his paper the following:
“An important role in climate change is attributed to global changes in the parameters of the geomagnetic field and magnetosphere; this refers in particular to the more than 500% increase in the North Magnetic Pole’s drift rate and reduction of the geomagnetic field intensity. Today, the impact of magnetospheric processes on Earth’s climate is considered a proven scientific fact.”
PROCEEDINGS: Natural Cataclysms and Global Problems of the Modern Civilization, WORLD FORUM – INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS September 19-21, 2011 – Istanbul, Turkey Source: (43.7 MB .pdf) Link.
A few Russian scientists took it upon themselves to warn the world many years ago. The Russian report titled, Planetophysical State of The Earth and Life (1997, 1998 in English) report also discusses climate change and simply states:
The temperature regime of any given phase of climatic reorganization is characterized by contrasts, and instabilities. The widely quoted, and believed, “Greenhouse Effect” scenario for total climatic changes is by far the weakest explanation, or link, in accounting for this reorganization.
There were reports of a global temperature maximum in 1994, and the almost uninterrupted existence of an “El-Nino” like hydrological effect. Satellite air surface layer temperature tracking [49,50] allowed the detection of a 0.22 degrees C global temperature variation (within a typical specific time period of about 30 days) that correlated with recorded middle frequency magnetic oscillations. The Earth’s temperature regime is becoming more, and more, dependent on external influences. [...]
There is a growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 10,000 years ago. This not so ancient major instability was revealed by the analysis of ice drilling core samples in Greenland [51]. [...]
Such high-speed transformations of the global climatic mechanism parameters, and its effects on Earth’s physical and biospheric qualities has not yet been rigorously studied by the reigning scientific community. But, researchers are now insisting more, and more, that the Earth’s temperature increases are dependent upon, and directly linked to, space-terrestrial interactions [52,53]; be it Earth-Sun, Earth-Solar System, and/or Earth-Interstellar.
Source: Planetophysical State of The Earth and Life, By DR. ALEXEY N. DMITRIEV, Published in Russian, IICA Transactions, Volume 4, 1997, 1998 in English.
Giant leap: Kolkata to get its own space centre [INDIA]
Times of India, 7th January 2013
KOLKATA: The city is all set to score another scientific first in the middle of this year.
The central government is funding the Kolkata-based Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) for setting up a Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences. IISER received a letter dated December 21, 2012, from the deputy secretary in the HRD ministry saying that it has been selected for the funding.
Speaking to TOI on Sunday, Dibyendu Nandi, who will be the coordinator of the space centre, said it will be first unit of its kind in West Bengal. “The cost of funding is about Rs 4 crore and is spread over a five-year period,” he said. The centre is expected to become opera-tional in the summer of 2013, he added. [...]
Nandi, who is involved with India’s maiden solar mission ‘Aditya’, said initially the centre will focus on space weather and supporting national astrophysics missions like ‘Aditya’ — provisionally slated for lift-off in 2016 — and the Laser Inter Ferro Metry Gravitational Observatory network in collaboration with a number of Indian scientific institutions and the US.
Explaining the importance of space weather, Nandi said it impacts our day-to-day lives like the operation of cellphones, GPS networks, electric grids and air traffic on polar routes. “It can also affect satellite operations and astronaut safety. Space weather will play an important role in our forthcoming mission to Mars to be lau-nched in October-November this year,” he said.
Comment: Another country setting up new space weather tracking facilities.
Space weather
Oxford University Press Blog, 7th January 2013
We are all used to blaming things (rightly or wrongly) on the weather, but now it seems that this tendency has been extended to space weather. Space weather, for those who are uncertain, describes the effects that flares and other events on the Sun produce on Earth.
Consult many of the sites on the World Wide Web that are devoted to events on a particular day in history, and you will be told that on 16 August 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to crash. The trouble is that this is an urban myth. The Toronto Stock Exchange did crash that day, but because of hardware and software failures, not because of a geomagnetic storm.
Comment: The Oxford University’s Storm Dunlop (what a name for meteorologist…) is a Fellow of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society, so we have someone with some pedigree providing a basic tutorial on space weather.
Al Gore’s Payday From Oil-Rich Qatar ‘Reeking With Irony’
Bloomberg News, 4th January 2013
Al Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against global warming, may gross about $70 million from the sale of his Current TV network to Al Jazeera, the cable channel funded in part by oil-rich Qatar.
Al Jazeera will pay about $500 million for Current TV, including the stake held by Gore, 64, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The network is one of dozens of investments made by the former vice president since he lost the 2000 presidential race by a slim margin.
“It’s reeking with irony,” said Jeff Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, who studies corporate governance. “It seems to be at least a paradox in terms of his positions on sustainability and geopolitics.” [...]
“Many Americans are tired of borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the Persian Gulf to make huge amounts of pollution that destroys the planet’s climate,” Gore said in September 2006 at the New York University School of Law. “Increasingly, Americans believe that we have to change every part of that pattern.”
Comment: Al Gore the zealous climate czar and hypocrite…. The Climate realists are laughing hysterically but I don’t have time to be amused…. See more headlines at Climate Depot .
