Total Solar Eclipse Reveals Geomagnetic & Climate Connection
Total solar eclipses reveal observational niceties about the Sun and Earth otherwise impossible to detect.
This article paraphrases a recent summary of research expeditions focusing on the Sun-earth connection outlined by C. Alex Young in Sky & Telescope magazine.1 August 21, 2017’s total solar eclipse allowed coordinated teams many “firsts” to be observationally surpassed, as well as confirming predicted Sun-earth effects dating to 1970.2
The details of this latter note involved confirming the Total Electron Count (or, TEC) in Earth’s ionosphere such that it described a bow wave, as researcher George Chimonas had predicted along with fellow student of the Sun-earth relation, C. O. Hines. As such, it has putative bearing on research conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s that should be further pursued. This and other details will be explored in order to re-focus attention to studies on particle entry into the Earth’s atmospheric envelope from the Sun accomplished back then that shed light on Earth’s climate. This while keeping in mind discoveries made recently at CERN on cloud making at the particle level.3
From the Sun To Earth: A Tale Of Unending Complexity
My last submission to Principia Scientific (“On A Coming Grand Solar Minimum Or Not: Model Prediction Mechanisms For Detecting Prolonged Solar Minima and Maxima,” May, 2018) outlined complexities involved in the coronal and especially chromospheric-to-coronal (and thence to Earth) relation.
A look at Figure 1 instantly weakens one’s mood for solar anomalies. It does give some useful measurements and entity descriptions that tie nicely in to my last contribution in this forum, and hopefully builds a base to further understanding facts noted elsewhere in this essay and beyond. As you will quickly note, the area bearing the most on Sun-earth relations regarding satellite and power-system disruption – and Earth climate – from the Sun comes from a puny 2,000 km ribbon whose output can be seen best with “natural coronagraphs” provided by occulting satellites (Earth’s Moon). The enormous and stable c, 500,000 km core and radiative zone – where long-term solar behavior is best studied – and the flighty convection zone at c. 200,000 km false diameter, dwarfs the photosphere and chromosphere. Even the skinny 30,000 km tachocline containing the solar minimum making machinery makes the most important aspect of short-term solar behavior seem invisible at c. 2,000 km width. Scientists anxiously await the next easily accesible – and long – total solar eclipse coming in 2024 to get around the photosphere’s (our eye view of the Sun) stolid empty stare even more.
Some Revelations Regarding Earth’s Ionosphere
Between the chromosphere and the corona’s fartherest outward point – which nonlinearly extends from the Sun in length depending on solar strength at any given time via “active regions” (solar flares, faculae, etc.) – sits the lower corona. This area is where, to quote Young, “all the action happens” – the “action” being mostly invisible except during interesting experiments and
Figure 1. The sun’s basic dynamical anatomy. The stable core and somewhat-stable radiative zone extends c. 500,000 km to the c. 200,000 –km thick convection zone’s base. The volatile and shearing tachocline is c. 30,000 km, the diagram showing its flex-boundaries from off the convection zone. The high-latitude, “pure” plasma solar corona and transient solar wind extend millions of kms. The solar variablity factor as it faces earth lies in the chromosphere (1800 km)– right above the even-smaller photosphere (250 km). Circles roughly represent dynamo action-through-to“surface.” (Modified after Zirker, J.B., Sunquakes – Probing the interior of the Sun [Johns Hopkins University Press : 2003]. Measurement data after de Jager.4)
observations made while total solar eclipses occur. It is the area that hides the criss-cross point somewhere in the chromosphere where electron density and temperature intersect, spewing “hotter” temperatures farther out in the solar wind than upon the actual false surface of the Sun and, consequently, into Earth’s ionosphere. Science still has much to learn about the ionosphere: using direct observation with spectrometers, light and temperature measure, ions, infra red emissions and other entities and tools researchers and observers have been able to follow emitta from the Sun straight into the Earth’s upper atmosphere for the first time.
Chromosphere-ejected emitta is literally shot out through the more polar-oriented solar coronal holes via the solar wind. This ionized wind – hyper-hot compared to Sun surface temperature – propagates millions of miles and, if pushed out enough into space from a blast called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) “corkscrews” particles (Archimedean spiral) into Earth’s currently-weakened magnetosheath without any heat loss (that is, adiabiatically).
Earth’s magnetosheath balloons in solar high-activity periods, becoming flaccid in weak-solar times “normally” (within 11-year Schwabe Cycle intervals) or can draw in on itself (Maunder Minimum) or widen out (Medieval Maximum) in extended “abnormal” periods no one can reliably predict. Solar flares, an analogous phenomenon to CMEs, speeds particle delivery hotly and, along with CMEs, usually strikes outward with CMEs. But these “sword stabs” behave nonlinearly, appearing only at certain solar latitudes and longitudes. Flares also vary widely in force – X Class the highest. Solar Energized Particles (or, solar protons) called “SEPs” – much like poorly-named “cosmic rays” (which are particles, not waves) ionize Earth’s stratosphere. The ionization rate in the Earth’s ionosphere, which winnows in and out of the stratosphere for one, varies with cosmic ray intensity and SEPs, or both. Currently, cosmic rays are at an all-time space age high around Earth due to a weaker Sun and a consequently weaker Earth magnetosphere, so they creep on in. For purposes of clarity, we will keep our eye on the word “electron” throughout this essay.
Everybody knows our Sun is young. This means – other than an enchanting waltz through the Herzsprung-Russell diagram – that it still has a lot of “metals” (elements) and one is Iron (Fe). Note that of all the “metals,” Iron is the only one thay can be magnetized below the Curie (Tc) temperature, or, “Curie point.” So Iron gave the clue reaching the Earth in terms of spectral emitta as seen in spectrometers / spectrographs because, as everyone also knows, elements burned give off a particular color distinguishing them from others. It was found in Young’s assessment that Iron when turned into a “plasma” by Sun dynamism – “plasma” also thought to be the “Fourth State Of Matter “– at speeds near that of light, survives the ride through the very hot coronal environment and into Earth’s atmosphere.
As such, teams obtained new temperature data from watching white light-scatter off coronal electrons and from highly ionized atoms. Ionization is atoms or molecules obtaining negative or positive charge by gaining or losing electrons to form an element’s ion, They found that coronal temperatures were 1 million Kelvin (K) from plasma expanding outward and 2 million K on plasma clustered on magnetized loops in the photosphere (see Figure 2). One million K is close to a million degrees Celsius and is nearly 1,800,000 degrees Farenheit.
Figure 2. Magnetized loop on the Sun (SOHO/ESA-NASA)
Science teams focused on seeing the chromosphere in visible light (our color spectrum of blue, red, green, yellow etc.) and measuring longer-wave infra red spectral lines coming from the aforementioned coronal plasma. Using techniques like chromospheric flash spectrum analysis, and from ground based operations to actual flights in our upper atmosphere at around 45,000 feet (c. 8 miles) equipped with spectroscopic gear, a Harvard-Smithsonian joint effort saw infra red spectral lines emerging from the Sun with measureable effects in the Earth’s atmosphere within a 1-6 micron window. For the first time in history spectral emission lines directly from the Sun’s chromosphere were measured in the Earth’s atmosphere – at the 1.4 to 4 micron level – right as a total solar eclipse occurred.
Crucially for this essay’s main points, this total solar eclipse allowed some understanding of Earth’s ionosphere to be studied in ways that revealed old predictions. An MIT and Virginia Tech team used models of electron effects on the Earth via the Sun and ionosphere confirming the prediction made nearly 50 years ago that a bow wave forms in the Earth atmosphere from plasma press coming in from the Sun. Formerly, the effects were noted without observing the mechanism causing the effect. The predicting scientist, George Chimonas, figured that electrons would flow into a hole produced by such a bow wave and that this would change the electron count. Observers from Virginia Tech deduced this bow wave’s presence by obtaining an altered electron count – a changed TEC – that unequivocally proved Chimonas’s hypothesis.
Figure 3. Dramatized illustration of solar wind striking Earth’s magnetosphere. Ionized particles leak into Earth’s atmosphere depending on the solar wind’s strength. When it is very strong due to an active Sun, ionized particles often blow right past the strong sheath. When weak, these particles loop-in and trickle downward via the magnetopause,, settling into Earth’s biomass. (NASA)
Some Past Studies Outlining the Sun-earth Climate Connection, And Connecting To New Discoveries
The realtime observations showed observers things and allowed them to collect data for reanalysis that will go on for years in several areas of endeavor. How the Sun effects our ionosphere as it buffets other Earth atmospheric layers in daylight versus nighttime will lead to numerous new insights into old questions about space and satellite communications interference and security, and continuing ones about Earth’s cloud cover modulation and so, climate.
What is especially important for this essay is that the August 2017 eclipse showed temperature and light emitta and electron variablility in our atmosphere not only being witnessed but reliably measured for the first time. This affirms Lord Kelvin’s dicta, to effect: “when you can measure phenomena you know something (concrete) about it.” So the anomalous occurrences on Earth that could not be attributed to the Sun or galactic influences in anything more than a guess have now been put to rest. It is not only the effects but also the causes having proof of their existences and connectedness. Some such occurrences so-mentioned were well-studied as far back as 1965, and early spacecraft were enlisted in the task of seeing, measuring, and otherwise investigating what literally were mysteries at the time.
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF)5 , Solar Magnetic Sector Boundaries (MSBs)6 And the Sun-earth Climate Connection
The sun and earth connect geomagnetically within the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF). Each seven days at polarity reversal a direct connection to Earth’s atmosphere happens whereby magnetized particles – solar or galactic or both: “electrons” the common denominator – filter into the stratosphere through the magnetosheath and hence, around inside the penetrating ionosphere. In weaker solar periods such as recent Solar Cycle 24 (ended April, 2018) much of these got into the upper Earth atmosphere and around it indeed. So much in fact that NASA could not help notice the abundance; and even Scientific American could not help but make a note of it.7 With continued weak solar behavior, this buildup will continue.
Figure 4. Solar magnetic sector structure technically described by IMP 1 spacecraft (Wilcox and Ness: 1965). Plus signs mean ionized particles heading away from the Sun, minus signs, heading toward the Sun. They are 3-hourly measures of IMF direction. Arrows show the field’s main direction. (After Herman and Goldberg, 1978 p. 72)
Particles/atoms in the IMF are “split” 8 in the stratosphere (“spallated”) at speeds near lightspeed and ionized matter through the ionosphere’s D and F layer (created by “halo CMEs”) then “couple” in the stratosphere, the results of “coupling” bleeding into the troposphere. Particles subsequently produce cloud condesation nuclei down there. Experiment has proven that this can happen ( CERN, 2012).9 The CERN test was called the CLOUD Experiment, the mnemonic meaning, “Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets.”
The experiment at CERN was new. But measuring SEPs/cosmic rays trickling into the lower atmosphere via Magnetic Sector Boundaries (MSBs) is not new knowledge.10 It was noted that after MSB passage, direct changes were noted in pressure in earth latitudes in a “flip-flop” effect: after MSB passage, pressure at constant height increases in high latitudes and consequently decreases in mid-latitudes. Another measurement even showed anticyclonic (high pressure systems’ rise = fair weather) at higher latitudes and cyclonic (low pressure rise = cloudy/storminess) in mid-latitudes in a related flip-flop at precisely such times. A large solar signal is found in the troposphere, depending on latitude, longitude, and height. Yet this can only be observed and measured regionally, not hemispherically.
In weaker solar times interplanetary shocks, or so-called Co-rotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) – happening when stronger solar flares perhaps with CMEs buckle against slower, already-released solar flare energy – co-rotate/interact or both with particles filling the entire heliosphere. (The heliosphere encompasses the entire Solar System.) So it just may be that magnetized particles are building up without relent at present in near-space between the Sun and Earth’s uppermost atmosphere due to continued weaker solar activity. Weak solar activity is pushing the ten year mark, incidentally.
Figure 5. Earth latitudinal cutoffs for SEPs, electrons and other particles (Imhof, et al, 1971) from a 1969 measurement. It was not until 2017 that they realized at least electrons seep in through a bow wave in the ionosphere. (After Herman and Goldberg, 1978 p. 56)
CIR action could add to the solar/galactic particle seepage into the magnetosheath. Since much particle buildup is currently occurring via earth’s magnetopause into the ionosphere, more cloud condensation nuclei will gather and, consequently, more clouds 1 km from earth’s surface will form – until or if solar activity strengthens (seasonally it usually does – unless weaker overall-solar activity is effecting seasonal strength). (Note: this leaves out geophysical and anthropogenic cloud-making activity which also occurs.)
Additionally if there are MORE SEPs and cosmic rays – and the difference between SEPs and cosmic rays is not great – causing MORE pressure gradient “flip flops” mentioned earlier – what are the weather fluctuations seen on Earth, lately?
It is harzarded here that “normal” orographical pressure zones (such as the North American High Pressure System over the Northeastern US, the Greenland Low Pressure System over Iceland, east to Norway; the Mongolian Low Pressure System from Sweden east to Russia etc.) shown on naval and air force maps ALTER SIGNIFICANTLY in periods of more SEPs and cosmic rays – in weak solar times like now. That is, areas on such maps normally showing regular high pressure (alternately low) will not appear so “normal” to the aerospace engineer, pilot, navigator, etc., as they have been accustomed. Rather, areas once known for high pressure will show more low pressure characteristics and vice versa. Areas more known for cloudiness and rain will show more fair weather, and vice versa – and the inevitable cloud mass and fair weather Coriolis W-E stalls will occur worldwide, most likely as a function of increased magnetic calm from the Sun, reflected in Earth climate behavior. But this is not clearly substantiated.
Figure 6. Rough residence times for cloud-making aerosols relative to height. Staggered lines between the tropopause indicates uncertainty as to how long they reside here (Herman and Goldberg, 1978, p 263, after Bach:1976)[i]
Formation Of Clouds And Thus, Potential Weather-Making Variables: Details Of the CLOUD Experiment And What It Found
To repeat, spallation is atoms splitting in the stratosphere (see Figure 5) in the IMF and the ionosphere. which we now know is a bow-shock/wave most likely due to solar action, letting electrons seep into Earth’s atmospheric envelope. (Spallation occurs at lightspeed collisions and super particle colliders made by humans can emulate this activity.) From here, via the D and L layer in the ionosphere, charged particles (electrons) filter down into the tropopshere, making aerosols that can produce clouds.
What “aerosols” are is pointed out in Shimazaki and Whitten (1976) from commonly-occuring compounds in our atmosphere:
H + NO2 yields NO + NO
H + O3 yields HO + O2
and Davis (1974):
2HO + SO2 yields H2SO4 (or sulphuric acid).
And we consider this when examining Figure 6 then comparing it with Figure 7. We assume this is what happens in nature when excessive electrons from a less-active Sun seeps into the Earth’s magnetosphere, due to the latter’s weakness at preventing this seepage which would otherwise be blown away into the heliosphere due to a more powerful solar wind.
This exact process has not been so-observed in actual nature in the locations ascribed them (stratosphere-upper troposphere). What the CERN experiment did was subject the compounds described above by Shimazaki, Whitten, and Davis – as well as ammonia gas (NH3) in a stainless steel container with pure and humid air. Charged particles (pion beams) were allowed to strike this chamber at accelerations the super (particle) collider at CERN allowed to happen. Particle behavior (“cosmic ray” or electron behavior) then was watched at various fluctuating temperature levels, and it was seen that the electron flux changed the aerosol creation rate by a factor of 10. This means that a lot of potential cloud condensation nuclei was created.
Figure 7. Cartoon of ionization process in the stratosphere and troposphere as motivated by the Sun making charged (+ and -) particles – or electron “particle coupling” – form aerosols from molecular clusters of gases such as, for example, H2SO4 (sulphuric acid gas). Evaporation and other particle-degradation continues as particles cluster ever more thickly as they head to the lower, more dense troposphere bottom layer. These then form cloud droplets (CERN).
Summary – And Conjectures
New discoveries amaze as much as confuse, anger, and delight. Yet, that so much was already known about other facts that connect to them make it all the more interesting. Older studies and discoveries so-linked to the recent uncovering of many new observations makes it appear as if no time has elapsed in between. Yet a + 50-year gap is noticed. In spite of this lapse we praise the progress made, and scorn the inevitable delays professional science will invoke over it, praying for convergence between the disparate fields of atmospheric physics, aeronomy, astronomy, solar astrophysics and others.
That emission lines of ionized Iron – surviving a process we still poorly understand called “plasma” ( in one incarnation) – from the Sun, being measured at micron size in our atmosphere at about 8 miles (45,000 feet) and well within our troposphere, is a stunning piece of science. This is proof that an element from the Sun can do this, and is most likely modulating particles so-seen to form cloud condensation droplets in our atmosphere, as this measure and observation matches the earlier-studied phenomena noted by atmospheric and solar researchers like Hines, Svaalgard, Shimazaki and others so long ago.
That the well-known link between weaker solar times and an abundance of solar “stuff” overwhelming our little planet makes recent observations of weather patterns involving much cloud cover to produce rain (monsoon) or blocking Earth-warming long wave radiation (UV) much more understandable. For we are currenly witnessing odd phenomenae in realtime with actual climate consequences. What of the pressure and temperature changes this particle influx is known to inflict on Earth, as studied by Svalgaard in the 1970s? (read Note 6). Is there anything more to learn here?
Yet for all this, we must try and understand the long drawn out research agendas that must needs proceed all of these glad tidings to date in our understanding of such matters. We may yet find out more things about the so-called “Fourth State Of Matter” that contradict our happy hopes as they tie in to other observations. The anomalous nature of such things as the ionosphere, particle coupling and actual happenings in realtime nature could easily shatter preconceived notions as we find out the hard way, while the Sun continues its doze, just how tenuous our technological existence is. To peel away the onion layers of the known towards the unknown direction of actual Sun-earth climate connections, the following flow chart is presented for consideration by those curious of just a smattering of the potential complexities involved in the Sun-climate connection.
Figure 7. Challenges in the Sun-earth climate connection:radiative flux/particle modulation in the solar-modulated upper atmosphere-to-lithosphere and their circuitous routes. (Courtesy: Joseph Fournier)
Steven Haywood Yaskell studied at Salem State University (Salem, Massachusetts USA) and Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) and is an independent historical science researcher and writer. He has had research published by venues such as the Journal For the History and Heritage of Astronomy (JH2) at James Cook University (Australia) and World Scientific (The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-earth Connection, with Wei-Hock Soon) as well as more popular journals. His last work on the Sun-earth climate connection was the book Grand Phases On The Sun: the case for a mechanism responsible for extended solar minima and maxima (Trafford:2013).
Notes
1 Young, A.C., “Shadow Science,” Sky & Telescope Magazine, pp 14-21, August 2018
2 Chimonas , G., Hines, C. O.,“Atmospheric gravity waves induced by a solar eclipse” Space Physics, Vol. 75, Issue 4, February 1970, pp 875-87
3 Kirkby et al, “ Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation,” Nature, Vol 476, 25 August 2011, p. 429.
4 de Jager, C., “Solar Forcing Of Climate: 1: Solar Variability,” Space Science Reviews,120, 2005, pp 197-241.
5 On the IMF: Herman, J.R. and Goldberg, R.A, Sun, Weather, and Climate (NASA Special Publication 426 [NASA sp;426] Scientific and Technical Information Branch) Washington, D.C. 1978, pp 76-77
6 That MSBs have a 4-cornered structure was observed by early spacecraft such as Explorer 33 and 35 and they determined its structure and behavior. MSBs as “bellweathers of geomagnetic storms” : Leif Svaalgard tabulated and extrapolated Magnetic Sector Boundary (MSB) passage back to 1926. Svaalgard, L, “Interplanetary magnetic sector structure 1926-1971,” J Geophys Res (77) 4027 (1972). Changes in at least earth atmospheric pressure due to MSBs was discovered in relation to these parameters. Svaalgard, L, Solar Activity and the Weather, SUIPR Rpt. N0. 526, Institute for Plasma Research, Stanford University, Ca. 1973
7 Matson, J, “A prolonged lull in the sun’s activity has allowed energetic particles to penetrate the solar system with record intensity” SciAm, 6 October 2009
8 Shimazaki, T., and Whitten, R.C., “A comparison of one-dimensional theoretical models of stratospheric minor constituents,” Rev. Geophys. Space Physics, 14., 1 (1976) : H + NO2 yields NO + NO (k = 2.97 (10-11) CM3, S-1, H + O3 yields HO + O2 (k=2.60 (10-11) CM3, S-1: Also Davis, D, “A kinetics review of atmospheric reactions involving HxOy compounds,” Canad J Chem, 52, 1405 (1974) – given the above in Shimazaki et al, to thus make sulphuric acid: 2HO + SO2 yields H2SO4.
9 Ibid Kirkby, et al.
10 Imhof, W.L, et al, “Solar particle cutoffs as observed at low latitudes,” J Geophys Res (76) 19 4276 (1971)
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