All week long, the Arctic Circle has been aglow with auroras. “The lights have been incredibly bright and active,” says Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen of Bø i Vesterålen, Norway. He took this picture on Feb. 17th:

“This has been a very nice month for auroras,” agrees Wioleta Zarzycka of Iceland, where coastal waters have been turning green in reflection of the sky above. The lights have even descended as far south as Scotland. “On Monday night, we had the first auroras I have seen here in years,” reports Gordon Mackay of Campsie Fells.

All this activity is a sign that the sun is coming back to life after a long, deep solar minimum. Sunspots have returned crackling with solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are once again buffeting Earth’s magnetic field.

Via Spaceweather…

Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406 C.E.) –  was a North African polymath — an astronomer, economist, historian, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, hafiz, jurist, lawyer, mathematician, military strategist, nutritionist, philosopher, social scientist and statesman (!!!!!!!) —born in North Africa in present-day Tunisia. He retreated into the desert in 1375 and emerged four years later having written one of the most important ever studies of the workings of history.

This volume, commonly known as Muqaddimah or ‘Prolegomena’, became a masterpiece in literature on philosophy of history and sociology. The chief concern of this monumental work was to identify psychological, economic, environmental and social facts that contribute to the advancement of human civilization and the currents of history. In this context, he analysed the dynamics of group relationships and showed how group-feelings, al-’Asabiyya, give rise to the ascent of a new civilisation and political power and how, later on, its diffusion into a more general civilization invites the advent of a still new ‘Asabiyya in its pristine form. He identified an almost rhythmic repetition of rise and fall in human civilization, and analysed factors contributing to it.

Ibn Khaldun’s writings seem particularly relevant today after reading this:
Endgame

I’ve mentioned more than once in these essays the foreshortening effect that textbook history can have on our understanding of the historical events going on around us. The stark chronologies most of us get fed in school can make it hard to remember that even the most drastic social changes happen over time, amid the fabric of everyday life and a flurry of events that can seem more important at the time.

The twilight years of Rome offer a good object lesson; so many people were convinced that the Second Coming might occur at any moment that the collapse of classical civilization went almost unnoticed; only a tiny handful of writers from those years show any recognition that something out of the ordinary was happening at all.

Reflections of this sort have been much on my mind lately, and there’s a reason for that. Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today’s news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all.

On Jan. 15th, a burst of Northern Lights startled observers around the Arctic Circle. “The sky exploded over my head!” reports Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen, who sends this picture from Bø in Vesterålen, Norway:

A solar wind stream is heading toward Earth and it could spark polar geomagnetic storms when it arrives on Jan. 18th or 19th.
Via Spaceweather..

On Dec. 13th, Earth passed through a stream of debris from extinct comet 3200 Phaethon. The encounter produced a surge of more than 160 Geminid meteors per hour.

815 new snowfall records, 304 low temperature, and 403 lowest max temperature records were set this week in the USA.

And they want us to pay how many billions (trillions?) to stop warming? What warming are they talking about exactly? How was that money going to be able to control the climate again? Personally, I like the cold (for half the year) because it makes the snow better, but overall, I imagine most people would be happier to have a little warming rather than extensive cooling (not that we control the climate either way, anyway).

Including those freezing their asses off in copenhagen. brrrrr.

The cold winner however is in Edmonton Canada, where they beat their old record by 10 degrees and recorded a frigid -46.1 C, or -58.4 C with wind chill. The old record of -36.1 C was set last year.

Maybe we should start a -273 Award for all the places which beat their previous cold records (modern times only).

One last point, If any of these record cold temps are at urban sites, then the natural variability has been enough to overcome forty years of Urban Heat Island effect (which a 6th grader here demonstrates has lead to temperature rises in the cities, whilst the rural areas nearby had no temperature rise).

When i first saw this, I thought it was fake, but a spiral with a greenish blue light was witnessed and recorded this morning by thousands of people throughout northern Norway and the Trondelag.

Video and more photos here: http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nordland/1.6902336

Info via spaceweather.com.

Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, Norway’s most celebrated astronomer, said:
“This was seen over an exceptionally large area of the country – in all of north Norway and the Trondelag. My first thought was that it was a fireball meteor – but it lasted far too long. It may have been a missile from Russia – but I can’t guarantee that is the answer. I rang the Air Traffic Control tower in Tromse. They said it was over in two minutes. To me, that is far too long for this to be an astronomical phenomenon. This spiral shape is unique. It is definitely not a variation of the aurora borealis – northern lights.”

Another video of it here. And more info here. The most likely explanation so far seems to be that it was an out of control Russian rocket, but that expanding black disk is still a bit puzzling.

« Previous Next »

1 2 3 4

The calm before the storm?

The sun is in the pits of a very deep solar minimum. Many researchers thought the sunspot cycle had hit bottom in 2008 when the sun was blank 73% of the time. Not so. 2009 is on the verge of going even lower. So far this year, the sun has been blank 75% of the time, and only a serious outbreak of sunspots over the next few weeks will prevent 2009 from becoming the quietest year in a century. Solar minimum continues.

spaceweather.com

Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković. Milanković mathematically theorised that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth, resulting in 100,000-year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years. The Earth’s axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth’s rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle. Currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.

As the Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, several quasi-periodic variations occur. Milankovitch studied changes in the orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s movements. Such changes in movement and orientation change the amount and location of solar radiation reaching the Earth. This is known as solar forcing. Changes near the north polar area are considered important due to the large amount of land, which reacts to such changes more quickly than the oceans do.

Orbital forcing is the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis and shape of the orbit. These orbital changes change the total amount of sunlight reaching the Earth by up to 25% at mid-latitudes. In this context, the term “forcing” signifies a physical process that affects the Earth’s climate.

This mechanism is believed to be responsible for the timing of the ice age cycles.

Today, northern hemisphere summer is 4.66 days longer than winter and spring is 2.9 days longer than autumn. As axial precession changes the place in the Earth’s orbit where the solstices and equinoxes occur, Northern hemisphere winters will get longer and summers will get shorter, eventually creating conditions believed to be favorable for triggering the next glacial period.

Precession is the change in the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the fixed stars, with a period of roughly 26,000 years. This gyroscopic motion is due to the tidal forces exerted by the sun and the moon on the solid Earth, associated with the fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid shape and not a perfect sphere.

The arrangements of land masses on the Earth’s surface are believed to reinforce the orbital forcing effects. Comparisons of plate tectonic continent reconstructions and paleoclimatic studies show that the Milankovitch cycles have the greatest effect during geologic eras when landmasses have been concentrated in polar regions, as is the case today. Greenland, Antarctica, and the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America are situated such that a minor change in solar energy will tip the balance between year-round snow/ice preservation and complete summer melting.

Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That’s what NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the “solar tsunami.”

Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun’s surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave.

“Now we know,” says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Solar tsunamis are real.”

Continued on the NASA website here….

Found this great picture below too from NASA picture of the day.

A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field and causing geomagnetic storms around the Arctic Circle. Last night in Lofoten, Norway, geoscientist Rob Stammes says the needle on his magnetograph spent the whole evening swinging wildly and he could see auroras beaming through the clouds. Not far away in Kvaløya, the sky was filled with green:

“The Northern Lights were everywhere–north, south, east and west,” says photographer Fredrik Broms. “It was a magical sight.”

Polar sky watchers should remain alert for auroras tonight as the solar wind continues to blow.

From spaceweather.com…

The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the soon-to-be-released 2012 movie.

But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

Continued here…

The image below is recorded from NASA’s Swift satellite of the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than our Sun, on EV Lacertae. High res image here..

So close and yet so far.
Do I believe man landed on the moon and then took off and flew back? It’s theoretically possible, although 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968, the year before the moon landings and looked believable too.

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds”

–Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Recently been reading a fantastic book called ‘The Sun Kings‘ about the start of modern astronomy and the impact on earth of the sunspot cycles. Whilst doing some further research into solar flares I came across this article posted today:

Galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high, a NASA spacecraft finds.

“In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” said Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. “The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions.”

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls “a perfect storm of cosmic rays.”

“We’re experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, “so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age.”

More here..

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090929-cosmic-ray-max.html

Another article here on the the same topic.

See that blur on the stars? that’s how much the earth moves in 30 seconds.